Paul Theroux - The Lower River

Toward noon, he said to Zizi, “Help me find some snakes.”

She frowned, pretending to sulk, but she got to her feet, gathered the basket, the burlap sack, the forked stick, the collecting equipment. And in the heat of the day, when everyone else was inside or in the shade, they walked across the clearing in the weight of the full overhead sun, to the creek, to look for snakes.

Hock was happy. A hunt for snakes — one of his pleasures from long ago — gave the day a purpose and some meaning, gave the flat and hot and undifferentiated landscape certain subtleties: the sandy patches where the snakes slept, the overhanging limbs that might hold the drooping length of a boomslang, the shallows in the creek where small narrow snakes like the snouted night adder whipped along just below the surface. The presence of snakes gave features to the monotony of the land, and looking for them, he was able to revisit his previous life here and to forget he was a captive.

Walking just ahead of him, the basket on her head, Zizi stirred him, since she was like the embodiment of his other, earlier Africa. Her granny, Gala, had seemed like a new woman then — educated, self-possessed, quick to respond, unexpectedly witty. Yet Zizi had no education, could not read, wore that simple wrap, went barefoot, and shaved her head, and apart from being kept by Gala from her initiation, she observed all the other customs of the Sena people that Hock remembered, even quoting proverbs to make a point. She was restrained in the old way, too, merely frowned at Hock’s wristwatch, and had taken no interest in his radio — chuckled when he told her it had been stolen.

The strangest habit she had, and the most endearing, was her singing deep in her throat when she was anxious. The melody was usually a dark, many-angled descant, a growly harmonizing that Hock followed with an aching heart.

She was singing now, the growl growing fainter, as they trod the gravelly hard-packed sand of the worn path at the perimeter of Malabo, through the head-high elephant grass.

Was it fear? It seemed that fear inspired her singing — or, not singing, but a vibrant harmony that rang through her whole slim body as she steadied the basket on her head, the basket in which they’d bring back the snakes.

“What else are you afraid of?” he asked.

Zizi whinnied in reply, a singing in her sinuses.

“Tell me.”

“I’m afraid to get married,” she said, and that sentence ended with a melody that seemed like an equivocation.

“Yes?” He wanted to encourage her to say more, but he was distracted, searching the hot gravel for snakes.

“But I’m not afraid to die.”

As she spoke the words, he saw her dead. It was an amazing pair of pronouncements and made her seem both wise and vulnerable. Virgins were so often martyrs. He thought of Aubrey again, who seemed to mock her for being innocent and yet was intimidated by her. And he remembered his asking her what men wanted, and her replying, They want what all men want. He wondered how to tell her that a man can be kind, that marriage can bring children. A husband would protect her and give her status: the Sena pieties that were part of the initiation. But Zizi was wise enough to know that a villager in Malabo chose a wife as he would a field hand, and that the role of a wife came to much the same thing.

But he didn’t say anything, because just then he saw a snake and all other thoughts left his head. She saw it too, raising her voice, an alarmed ascending song in her sinuses, and stepped back, reaching to steady the basket on her head.

The puff adder lay on the hot coarse sand but near enough to some dead leaves to seem like part of the trash of twigs and grass nearby, the thick brownish snake as unmoving as vegetable matter, its jaw resting against the sand.

In stepping back, Zizi had braced herself, keeping her knees together and slightly bent. As she murmured her fearful song, now softly slipping it into her throat, Hock could see that her face was beaded with sweat, not from effort or the heat, but wet as though from terror.

So transfixed was she by the sight of the fat snake that she had not noticed that her wrap, the faded chitenje cloth that had been hitched under her arms, had slipped its knot and drooped, exposing one neat breast and a swollen nipple, like a pure unsucked fruit at the top of the smooth bulge. She had a body almost devoid of curves, which made her hard muscled bottom and her small breasts so noticeable.

The snake was facing away from them, flicking its tongue, a slitted eye staring from each side of its head. Hock saw what perhaps in her fear Zizi did not see, that the adder had started to swell, slowly thickening. It had seen them. It had not changed its position on the sand, yet it was now almost one-third fatter than a moment ago, when they’d stopped six feet away.

Absent-mindedly, Zizi touched her throat as if registering the vibrato of her song on her skin. Then her hand slipped to her breast, cupping it, her fingertip caressing the nipple. Her mouth was open, the whining melody from it worrying a strand of saliva that was like a lute string vibrant between her parted lips. Her teeth were just visible. She seemed terrified, she’d gone rigid, her eyes glittering as though in ecstasy.

“Pick it up,” Hock said.

But she didn’t move. Her eyes were fixed on the fattening thing.

Hock had been carrying his forked stick behind his back. Without stepping nearer, he drew the stick forward and jabbed it in the direction of the snake, rousing it. The snake shortened its muscled body and then, uncoiling, chucked itself at the stick. And before it had time to prepare itself for another rush forward, before it was able to draw its body into another explosive knot, Hock clamped the fork of the stick at the back of its wide head. Now, its head pinned, its body whipped against the sand.

“Take it now.”

Zizi’s mouth gaped, the growly song of fear hovering in her tongue. Her knees were still pressed together.

“Hold it behind its head. Use your fingers to grip it tight.”

“I cannot.”

“Do it for me,” he said.

She removed the basket from atop her head and placed it without a sound on the sand next to her, all the while watching the pinned-down puff adder thrashing its swollen body and pushing at the sand.

“Please,” he said. It was a word he tried to avoid saying in the village, a word of the weak, a word of submission.

Zizi hunched her shoulders and knelt, her wrap slipping farther, both breasts exposed, as she reached and gripped the snake where Hock had indicated. As she took hold of it he lifted the stick, so when she stood she had the snake’s head and gaping jaws above her skinny fist and the whole body of the snake and its tail encircling her forearm.

The song, a jubilant chant, rose from her throat to her mouth and nose, and it pounded against her sweaty face. The snake’s jaws were wide open, not attempting to strike but gasping for air. Zizi’s grip was a stranglehold.

“Easy,” Hock said.

As if hearing him for the first time, Zizi faced him bare-breasted, holding the snake, the foamy, speckled jaws widened at Hock, its fangs dripping mouth-slime.

Hock was slightly alarmed by the change in Zizi — he had not seen this fierce face nor heard this song before. He reached over and took her wrist and, replacing his grip with hers, picked at the snake’s tail, uncoiling its body from her arm, where it had wrapped itself like a tentacle.

“You are strong,” he said.

She surrendered the snake, and as Hock took possession of it, she said, “I am not afraid,” and her face glowed, her eyes glittered, she was breathless. “Not afraid,” she repeated with wonderment, and then was silent, breathing hard, no longer singing.