Paul Theroux - The Lower River

“I will tell you in a moment,” Manyenga said. “But first the important information. I must know if you are happy.”

“I am happy. Thanks for bringing this man to me.”

Manyenga leaned closer and licked his lips and said with severity, “And that you will not abandon us again.”

His tone was so serious that Hock said quickly, “Don’t worry.” Then, hearing himself, he added, “Why would I want to leave Malabo?”

“Of course you are safe here,” Manyenga said, too engrossed to hear the irony. “Because we are making you safe.” Before Hock could speak, Manyenga said, “Has anyone harmed you here?”

Hock shook his head, unable to put the sadness he felt into words: the terror of the suspense that had crushed his spirit, the dull ache of fear that was like an illness he’d begun to live with. And everything that Manyenga said had had a price.

“How much?” Hock said.

Only then did Manyenga give him the large number, adding that the old man would need some too. He stood and squared his shoulders and waited for the money to be handed over.

LEVELING HIS GAZE and leaning forward to squint across the clearing into the glare and the heat, in the long days he spent waiting for Aubrey to show up — or would it be some sort of response from the consulate? — he thought only of home. The nest-like comfort of it, his clean bedroom and kitchen, the armchair where he had sat, sorting through his visa application and all the paraphernalia of timetables that had led him back here. Medford now seemed as safe, as reassuring, as mute and indestructible as Malabo had once been in his imaginings. Home was solid, not only because he had nothing to fear, but because it could be trusted. Malabo existed in a web of deceits. Manyenga lied, everyone lied, hardly without pretense. They spoke a shadow language of untruth; every word could be translated into a defiant lie.

Home was iced coffee in a tall glass, crisp lettuce on a china plate, a cold bottle of beer, chilled fruit, the snap of a celery stalk, a clear glass of cool water, a ham sandwich with cheese on new-baked bread, fresh sheets, an oak tree’s enveloping shade, his barefoot soles on the polished hardwood floor of his condo, the rattle of white tissue paper in a box of new shirts. The very words. But home was unattainable.

Darkness and cold now seemed to him blessings that sustained life and gave it rest. This heat was like a sickness without a remedy. He went on staring across the clearing, Zizi squatting on his right, Snowdon on his left.

As always, he was muddled in trying to remember what day it was. He guessed that a week had passed since Aubrey had gone, a week of suspense. That meant either that the message had not reached the consulate or that the consulate had shelved it. But surely they would not have ignored such a desperate plea from an American citizen. Hock guessed that Aubrey had taken the money and fled, tossing the message away. So he resolved to give up hoping, and the night of the very day he abandoned hope and tried to think of another plan — he was alone, sitting beside his sooty smoky lantern — a boy in a tattered shirt and torn pants and unlaced sneakers stepped out of the darkness like a cat and knelt and said, “ Mzungu. ”

“Don’t call me mzungu. ”

“ Bwerani, ” the boy said — come with me — no apology. Perhaps he didn’t speak English.

Hock followed as the boy had asked, leaving the lantern, walking behind the scuffing boy, through the garden, tramping among the furrowed dimbas of pumpkins and corn stalks, so as not to be seen, but traveling in the general direction of the road beyond the village. It was the road that led to Gala’s hut, but they were walking in the opposite direction.

Ever since arriving in Malabo, he had been dictated to by the young and the ragged and the insolent. And here I am again, he thought, a big fool, fumbling after a boy on a moonlit path. The seat of the boy’s trousers was torn, exposing the muffin of one skinny buttock.

“Come,” the boy said again in his language.

Overwhelmed with helplessness, and without any faith, Hock had simply stopped in the cornfield. Hearing that the sounds of brushed and trampled corn stalks had ceased, the boy had turned and seen Hock, his hands on his hips, standing in the field, sighing.

“What’s the point?” Hock said, not caring that the boy didn’t understand. But when he sighed again and made a move to return home, the boy spoke again.

“Aubrey,” he said, but in three syllables, pronouncing it to rhyme with “robbery.”

“Where is he?” Hock asked in Sena.

“He has a vehicle,” the boy said in Sena. But the word garimoto could mean anything with a motor — a car, a bus, a tractor.

Doubting, stepping slowly, he obeyed the boy, and past a row of trees, in the frosty glow of the moon, he saw a van parked at the entrance to a path just off the side road.

Even if the night had been moonless he would have seen the van, a model known as a combi, because it gleamed white, and on a side panel, inside a gold shield, was the large double-A of L’Agence Anonyme. The whole name was picked out on the rear doors. It was the only four-wheeled vehicle Hock had so far seen at Malabo — a novelty, of improbable size, and seemingly new: no dents, perhaps polished, like the powerful instrument of a dramatic rescue.

Inside, one small red light burned, went dim, and brightened again, and on closer inspection Hock could see it was a cigarette that Aubrey was puffing in the front seat.

Seeing Hock, he said, “Get in — hurry up.”

The ragged boy who’d led him there stepped beside Hock and pushed at him.

“You give money,” he said, his first words in English.

Hock nudged him aside and spoke to Aubrey: “We’re going now?”

“Yes, yes. Come inside. We go.”

The dimness of the pale moonlight exaggerated the shadows on Aubrey’s face, making it skull-like, bonier, more like a mask. The glow on his dark skin and the streaky froth of his sweat on the creases of his neck were greenish.

“I can’t leave everything behind.” He was thinking of Zizi.

“You have your money?”

Hock had all his money — always had it, because he had ceased to trust — and with it his passport and wallet in a pouch in his fanny pack, the only safe place.

“Some money. Not all,” he said, though they probably knew he was lying.

His clothes, some papers, his knife, his stick, his shaving kit, his medicine, his duffel. The snake in the basket. He could leave all of it. But Zizi: once again she was unaware she was being abandoned. Nothing he owned mattered when he realized his life was at stake, and as for Zizi — he’d do something, send her money through Gala, get her to safety, away from the dead end of Malabo.

The ragged boy had pressed himself against Hock’s legs, pleading for money. Hock pushed him, and then, in a twitch of superstition, he handed over the Bic lighter he found in his pocket.

“No,” the boy objected, and gestured with it, as though to hand it back.

But by then Hock was in the van, in the sudden comfort of a seat with springs, a cushion, a handle he grasped to steady himself. He was momentarily reassured. Aubrey started the engine, slipped the gearshift down, and, rocking the van across some ruts, jounced onto the road.

“Put on your headlights,” Hock said.

“No lights.”

“You’ll drive into the creek.”

“Lights are bad. The others will see us.”

Aubrey drew his lips back, as if it was an effort to speak. His teeth were long, exposed almost to their roots, the gums shrunken — another revelation of the moonlight. He was nervous and sounded weary, and perhaps it was also the slow bumping progress of the vehicle in the moon-frosted darkness that made it seem that he was driving badly.