Paul Theroux - O-Zone

There were sunbirds, weavers, fisheagles, falcons, and owls; there were vultures and hawks. They flocked to Earthworks, staying near the coast, where food was still available.

For a while longer they flew over an area so bare that it hardly looked like land at all, but rather like the remains of a place that had blown away. And then ahead was the city. It lay beneath a range of hills that rose to a set of knucklelike peaks. The capital had a look of prosperity — white buildings, granite towers, brick chimneys and walls, the city piled up in the dust. But that look was misleading, for closer it was like any of the places they had seen in O-Zone, and for a moment Bligh seemed to think she was back in her quarter. This was a city of broken windows and ruined streets and overturned cars and burned-out parks.

There were Africans on the roads below, many more people than there were vehicles. The Africans possessed the city: they were everywhere, crowding the buildings, filling the roads; but they hardly moved. They were standing and sitting and lying down. They had built their own shelters on the sidewalks, and against fences and trees.

Hooper did not dare land the rotor, but he went close enough for Bligh to see how the city had been turned into an enormous camp, with shacks and cooking fires lining the main road, and shantytowns stacked against the old abandoned towers — the banks and office buildings and ruined hotels.

"That could have happened in the States," Hooper said. "But they got smart and sealed the cities."

Bligh said, "I never lived in a city," and looked down at the mobs in the streets.

"They'd eat you alive," he said.

He went lower and lingered over the upturned faces, the reaching arms, the whirling woodsmoke. The rotor's noise drowned the voices.

"Where are we going?"

From her tone he knew he had succeeded in frightening her. He wanted to say: This is the world, too. But he also wanted her to know that she was safe with him. He wanted her to love him for taking her here, and for being able to fly this machine, and for getting her out of here. He swooped between two narrow buildings and scattered the people on the street, and then he rose in a cyclone of dust that he had created, lifting the rotor free of the city.

She said, "I want to learn how to do that."

It surprised him. He had not counted on her wanting to fly a rotor herself. He almost said: But you're an alien!

He said, "I'll show you how, someday."

Talking about the future made him feel hopeful. He wanted to prolong this pleasure. He began to make more promises, but he saw that his eagerness was silencing her, and so he stopped.

They were over the plains again, flying above the blowing dust. "Imagine lions and elephants and rhinos," he said, looking down. But he could not picture it; he could not imagine animals living in the dust of this empty plain.

They passed over the dry riverbeds and the red crumbling hills. Nearer the coast, Hooper showed her the system of perimeters and roadblocks that prevented anyone from entering the coastal strip; and the way the airport was fortified, and the harbor blocked. They flew on, over the shoreline of settlements and hotels, and beyond the reef, where there were patrol boats.

If Bligh was impressed she did not say so. Hooper was not sure whether she was afraid. He had expected her to feel both thrilled and insecure — it was the reaction of most people to Africa, living like islanders on the small patches of luxury that were reserved for visitors. She had been alarmed by the sight of all those Africans living wild in the capital— the sight of them had startled her.

But none of this bothered her half so much as the other guests at Earthworks — naked, painted, wearing masks; their laughter; their late-night parties, and their cruising in the compound; looking for pickups; the food-fights. Their weapons worried her. And the way they fired them — shooting at the coconuts that were flung out over the surface of the sea. Africa did not frighten her, nor did the Africans, who seemed merely pathetic or docile workers — and it seemed everyone called them aliens. Yet the Earthworks Lodge and its guests made her silent and watchful.

She kept her wits about her. She saw and heard things that he missed. She was stronger than any of the others. She did not swim or sun herself — she couldn't swim; she waded by the shore; she regarded sunbathing as absurd and unhealthy. She ate — slowly, gratefully — listening the whole time.

It had been dark when they arrived back at Earthworks, and they had seen Murdick's rotor being washed by an African.

"Too dark to look for shells," Hooper said.

Bhigh had collected a bag of them. He had bought her a gold bracelet, a mask, a bowl of polished onyx, the swordlike horns of a now-extinct buck, a set of sharks' teeth — African treasures. She had not said so, but Hooper knew she preferred the shells she found on the beach.

They sat on the veranda of their hut that evening, listening to the splash of the sea, the waves breaking softly on the sand with a gasping sound.

He said, "Are you happy?"

"I never ask myself that," she said. "But I am!"

The path was lighted with the torches that were stuck into the grass beside it. He had turned off the veranda lights; he wanted to be with her in the darkness.

After a while she said, "What's the sound — that little buzz? I always hear it at night."

It was the camera. He used an infrared one here. He had believed it was inaudible — anyway, it was supposed to be. But she was so alert, so sensitive to movement and sound.

He said, "Must be a bug."

"Sometimes I think you're afraid of me," she said.

He wondered whether it was true.

"Because you keep giving me things," she said, and before he could question that, she added, "But you never touch me."

"Would you like me to?"

"I'd like to please you."

He thought ahead to the video: to seeing her and hearing her say that, and playing it back, to hear her repeat it.

"Tell me what you want," she said. "I'll do anything you want."

He tried to see her face in the darkness. He was glad he was shooting this. He liked her seriousness, her confidence in saying this — her believing that she was able to do anything he asked. He liked the stillness of the shadows on her face, her odd straight hair that was so fine it picked up the firelight from the torches down on the path.

"I want you to go on saying that," he said.

Hooper wondered if their long day together had produced that peculiar intimacy. If so, he looked forward to longer days with her.

He wanted to show her he trusted her, by divulging his most secret thought and saying, I am one of the rarest, luckiest people in the world. I have had everything I have ever wanted.

It was a vain boast that he had always been too superstitious ever to say aloud, yet he was on the verge of blurting it out now — then she would know everything about his wealth, his luck, his vanity. He wanted to record her reaction to it: he was still shooting. What would she say?

"Look at me," he said.

But before he could begin, he saw Hardy, and Moura on the path, making their way between the flickering torches. Hooper could not think straight. In his reverie with Bligh, that intimacy that was a suggestion that they were very similar — not that they belonged to each other or were possessive in that way, but wanted the same things, the same simple happiness — time had faltered. Only when he saw his brother and Moura on the path did he remember that they were in Africa.

Moura was nearly naked, and the way she walked in her nakedness revealed an anxiety that her clothes would have concealed.

Hardy was behind her, but he spoke first — and sharply: "You told me there were no more aliens there!" Hooper thought: Africa?