Paul Theroux - The Lower River

He heard her singing. He had heard it before, her habit of singing when she was afraid, when she was anxious, but now he saw that she was singing softly in contentment, releasing her emotion in a muffled melody.

And when the dwarf Snowdon saw him, he chattered and smiled, drooling, pointing at Hock and at last bowing to him on his bandy legs, touching Hock’s feet as Zizi had done, but the dwarf performed it with respect so exaggerated it seemed a form of clowning.

“Fee-dee-dom,” the dwarf said.

Manyenga had not seen that — a good thing — but he saw how Zizi and the dwarf attended to him.

He said, “They treat you like a big man.”

“Aren’t I a big man?”

“At the Agency compound they sent you away with nothing.”

“What did you want?”

“Food and medicine. And what, and what. They are supposed to help us, but they cheat us. They give food to those devil children, and themselves, those azungu, they live like chiefs. Send them away!”

“Why don’t you send me away?”

Manyenga was stung. He’d come to Hock’s hut to offer a few mild insults and to remind Hock of the ineffectual power of someone looked after by a skinny girl and a dwarf — what sort of chief could this be?

“Not at all,” Manyenga said. “I have come for kusonka. ”

It was one of those euphemistic words that meant to start a fire, but also to hand over a sum of money.

Hock said, “You’ve already got a fire.”

“Give money,” Manyenga said, licking his lips— geev mahnie. The crude demand made all of Manyenga’s replies like the grunts of a brute.

“Who am I?”

“Chiff.”

“What do you say to the chief?”

“Puddon?”

Hock repeated his question.

“Pliss.”

“I’ll give it to you later, when you have food for me.”

Neither Zizi nor the dwarf understood, yet they looked on with admiration, smirking at Manyenga, believing that Hock had defied the big man.

He knew he had failed, had allowed himself to be abandoned, and captured, and threatened, and rejected, and seized again — snakes and ladders. He had been starved and out of desperation had drunk swamp water. In the shiny tank at the Agency compound his face, burned by the sun, looked scorched, and he was unshaven and dirty. He had sorrowed at that face of desperation.

The one constant in his life as a shop owner in Medford had been his appearance. He was aware all those years, standing in his clothing store, that he had to dress well, dress better than anyone who entered, because he was advertising his own goods — the blazer, or the tweed vest he wore when in shirtsleeves, the cravat with the blue shirt, the dark dress suit with chalk stripes. He dressed for his store, where he could never be overdressed, knowing that a customer might say, “I want something like that,” meaning his tie or vest, since men were inarticulate, or at least self-conscious, when talking about new clothes. And Hock enjoyed dressing well; it was a way of armoring himself against the world. He hid himself in beautifully made clothes that were full of distractions — cuff links, tie pin, watch fob, belt buckle. He was reassured by the order, the sense of wearing a uniform. Decades of dressing well.

Now he was naked, or as naked as any man could be in the Lower River. Even the poorest man wore trousers and a shirt — ragged-assed long trousers, a shirt in ribbons. A woman might go bare-breasted — Zizi’s aunt’s floppy breasts had been uncovered the day Hock had visited Gala. But a man could not bare his chest, and only small boys wore shorts.

Still, he was naked — badly sunburned, and his skin was crusted with dirt. The cuffs of his trousers were in shreds, his sleeves were torn. His hands were clean, because Zizi had brought water in a basin for him to wash before eating, but his clean hands contrasted absurdly with his ragged clothes and dirty face. He was all the more touched that Zizi should care for him in this condition, was almost tearful that she accepted him.

More than that, she brought him soap and a cloth, so that he could go to the stream and bathe. She did not follow him. Such a thing was not allowed in the Lower River, a woman or girl lurking anywhere near a man washing himself. But when he set off for the stream, thinking of her kindness, he remembered his first sight of her at the small lagoon beside the stream, when she had crossed, going deeper, lifting her wrap higher up her legs, and higher to her thighs, until the water brimmed against the secret of her nakedness.

Hock washed himself, soaping his head, splashing like a dog and spewing. Then he wrapped the cloth around his body and walked back to the hut. The heat was so great, he was dry before he’d taken many steps. He rummaged in the bag he’d left behind, found the razor and his spare clothes, which Zizi had washed, and he shaved. After he changed into clean clothes, he sat in the shade, watched by Zizi and the dwarf. He was content for the moment; he had survived his escape attempt. It was better to be here than on the river alone, or in the village of children, or contending with the hostile men at the Agency depot.

Having survived, he was wiser if not stronger. And the order of his life here helped. He wasn’t alone. Sitting there, flicking at flies — they were tsetses, small and quick, biting flies that left a pinch on his skin — staring into open space, he tried to work out how long he had been in Malabo. He had believed it to be six weeks. But was it? The arrival week was vivid in its reminders, because it was all he had planned to spend there. The second week was emphatic with disappointment — the ruined school, his pointless labor. After that, an effort to get away. The dance. The visit to Gala and finally his fleeing downriver, now over a week ago. More than six weeks, now into the seventh, maybe two months. He was mocked by this passage of time in which he had accomplished nothing, made more futile by the thought that he was not sure exactly how much time had passed — he who had measured every hour of every day he’d spent at his store in Medford.

He could not find the confidence to think about leaving now. He was physically well, but his mind was too battered to have answers, and it took him a long time to concentrate. He was content to sit, to do nothing, to contemplate his small shady courtyard. He was oddly reassured by the girl Zizi, waiting for him to ask something, and by the dwarf Snowdon, who sat blinking at the flies gathered and hurrying around his eyes.

The next day, Manyenga was back. Hock had seen him crossing the clearing from his cluster of huts, and he could tell from the way Manyenga walked — determined, forcing himself to march — that he had a favor to ask or a demand to make. It was an importuning walk, elbows out, head forward. He wanted something.

“Yes, father,” he said, and uttered all the formulaic Sena greetings — that too indicated that he’d be demanding. At last he said, “You instructed me to come back, and myself here I am.”

“With your hand out.”

Instead of standing, out of respect, or asking Manyenga to sit, he remained on his creaky chair, enjoying the man’s discomfort as he rocked on his heels.

“Because you are owing us too much of money.”

“Why do I owe you?” Hock said. “I came here many weeks ago to visit you. I was going to leave, but somehow I am still here.”

“As our honored guest. As minister. As our friend.”

“Is that why I owe you?”

“No, my friend,” Manyenga said, and looked fixedly at him. “At the Agency you came away with nothing at all. They didn’t respect you — no.”

The truth of this was hurtful. He remembered the sneering man, the African servant offering him a drink of warm water, his being threatened and sent away, and his turning and walking into the bush, on a muddy game trail, tramping the leaf litter.