Paul Theroux - The Lower River

“Father,” Manyenga called out, and failing to get his attention, he shouted, “Chief!”

But Hock was still watching the three boys, who sat picking at food on the plates that had been set out on the mat. The boy with the cap was sitting on a chair near Manyenga, the others squatting at the mat’s edge.

Another rule was that no one ate until the chief took the first bite, and when the chief appeared, or an elder, the younger members at the meal stood up, turned aside, eyes down, or knelt to show respect.

None of this. They were indifferent, as when Hock had seen them downriver at their makeshift village, as reckless as when they’d led Hock to the football field for the arrival of the Agency helicopter and the celebrities — the food drop. They had all started to eat, they chewed, they licked their fingers, they didn’t smile, and when they glanced at Hock it was in an appraising way, as you would look at merchandise in a market stall.

Hock saw that Zizi had not followed him, and guessing that she was back at the hut, he was confused, reluctant to meet these boys again. In their village they had taken no interest in him, even when he’d been starving. He recalled the ease with which they had handled the money he’d given them, fingering it expertly. Now they were in Malabo and talking with Manyenga, who had rescued him from them at the field, amid their scavenging, and had warned him against them. They had seemed like enemies then, and Manyenga a friend to him, but now he couldn’t tell the difference. He had no money, he had no friends. What did it matter whether he paid his respects to Manyenga by dining with him and these boys? Life went backward here, and he was more the stranger now than before.

“Eat!” Manyenga cried out, seeing Hock turn and, bent over, limp away. “Eat!”

He spoke as though to an obstinate animal, or a child, or a prisoner, and Hock realized that to them he was all three.

So he returned to his hut, and as an hour or so of daylight remained and it was too hot in the slanting sun to go inside, he lay on a mat on his veranda and shut his eyes and pitied himself for being there, at the mercy of the village, and having to endure the contempt of Manyenga’s having a meal with the three boys dressed as rappers. How had they gotten here from that far-off village? Well, he had made it here from there.

Then he slept, the sudden honking, sweating, late-afternoon slumber brought on by heat and despair.

He dreamed of being in a dusty sunlit room, hearing voices. And then he knew he wasn’t dreaming — the voices were those of the boys, talking about him to Manyenga, murmuring.

“He is sick.”

“Not sick, my friend. He is strong.”

“Old, too”—another voice.

“White men can be old and still have heart.”

The first words had woken him, but instead of sitting up he remained still, crumpled on the mat, his eyes closed, listening to the mutters.

It was as if they were haggling over him, Manyenga dealing with the boys — he was the salesman, they the reluctant buyers.

“And he can be insolent.”

The word was chipongwe; it was how he had seen them.

“You are strong. You have connections. You can handle him.”

“I think he is listening.”

“To what? You are not saying anything.”

“He is older than my father.”

“Your father is dead.”

“That is what I mean.”

Some weeks before, when he’d had his fever, he had lain in his hut and heard voices like this. And he had grown sad, unable to move, feeling chills and a skull-cracking headache, and he had been an eavesdropping wraith.

It was like that now, but worse, and the scene that came to mind was the Somerville woman — what was her name? — lying in her bed with the python beside her. That snake had flattened itself and Hock grew alarmed, knowing that it was preparing to flex its jaws and swallow her.

When they fell silent he opened his eyes and rolled over to face them. He saw them walking away, and Zizi beside him, bug-eyed.

He spoke what he was thinking: “They want to eat me.”

“Not eat. But to buy you.” Zizi took a long breath. “The big man Festus is wanting money for you.”

Exhausted, Hock slept well that night, and was alarmed only when he woke up in daylight and remembered what had happened the evening before, and was appalled.

Zizi was standing beside the bed, looking ghostly against the mosquito net. She said, “They are still here in the village, those boys.”

He saw that she was holding a kettle.

“Put the kettle down.” She set it down with a clank. “Come here.” He parted the mosquito net and she crept in, ducking the curtain of net. She lay on the cot, but held herself compactly, facing away. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I just want to talk.”

ANYTHING THAT HAPPENED at night was so muffled and menacing that to the villagers nothing happened at night. In the Lower River, darkness fell in a blinding way, a swift and sudden collapse of light, and in the morning the village was as it had been left at sundown — that overturned bucket moistened with dew, the pucker of footprints so deep in the gray dampened sand they could have been fossils, the scattered and sucked mouthfuls of sugar cane fibers and the bitten stalk, the bunting of torn shirts hanging limp on a line, the blackening stem of bananas twisted on a rusted coathanger on a tree branch, out of the reach of rats and hyenas. Only the Nyau ceremony, a ritual in darkness, was allowable at night, but the last Nyau had been danced long ago, when the presiding image had been Hock’s own face — the long nose, the scraps of white rags and plastic — and he had believed that he’d been granted power. But time had shown his power to be no more potent than the rags.

For weeks he believed a miracle might happen. He imagined it this way, as in a movie. On a tray on a desk in the American consulate in Blantyre was an accumulating stack of letters from Roy Junkins, sent from Medford. And a voice: That’s odd. Another one. This guy Ellis Hock doesn’t pick up his mail. Maybe we should go down there and see if everything’s okay. The concerned consul would act quickly. Hock extended this scene into a hopeful drama of rescue, the sleek consular vehicle drawing into Malabo and an American in a suit greeting him, then bearing him away. Hock would halt the vehicle, saying, “There’s someone else,” and call to Zizi.

He played the scene in his head, to console himself, but it only made him sadder.

He was now so far from that hope he’d begun to think that he might never leave, that he would go on suffering here as he had for more than two months, living on lumpy steamed nsima, dried fish, boiled slimy greens, bread and tea, a mango, a wedge of pumpkin, groundnuts seethed in their shells. That nothing would change. Already he knew what it was like to be elderly, to be feeble, to fall ill, to walk with difficulty and hate the sun. He’d lose his teeth like Norman Fogwill. In his recurring mood of bitter pettiness he remembered how in the hour or more that he had spent with Fogwill, the man hadn’t stirred or been particularly friendly, and when Hock had risen to leave, Fogwill had remained in his chair.

At one time he might have been strong enough to make a dash to the boma. In the first few weeks he’d felt up to it, but procrastinated in the African way. He might have been lucky. But he had weakened, and declined. He’d come to Malabo a healthy man, active for his age, with the idea of fixing the school and being capable of putting in a day’s work at the building. He’d felt optimistic, and he imagined leaving a lump sum with someone like Manyenga for the upkeep of the school, perhaps depositing money in the bank at the boma, the Malabo account.