Paul Theroux - The Lower River

Swallowing a sob, Hock said, “There’s someone else coming with us.”

In the small screen of the rearview mirror skinny arms and small faces were sucked into the distance, jumping children and staring men, pinched by the receding road and the shaken curtains of elephant grass. From the dark water glinting at the end of trampled paths he saw that he was leaving the river behind, surfacing after months of holding his breath.

Now he could breathe. The girl — no longer a girl — sat upright in the speeding Jeep. Even seated she was stately; even wounded, with blood crusts of damage on her face, she was radiant for seeming unafraid; innocent, too, gladdened by the strangeness, smiling at the turbulent grass in the slipstream. She’d never been up this road before. Strengthened by her smile, Hock felt purposeful with her beside him.

The dust rose behind the van, a brown rearing dust-snake. Each time he looked there was more dust, uncoiling in pursuit, but so like a dissolving mirage that he stopped looking back, and lifted his eyes from the mirror to the wider road ahead.