Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

"Not in Jeronimo," Father said.

Mr. Weerwilly said, "He sinks Jeronimo is wonderful. This is crazy. He doesn't know Jeronimo. Jeronimo is not wonderful. It is better than La Ceiba, that is true. Four hundred dollars for one acre? It would be much more here."

"You heard him, Charlie," Father said, and set his eyes on Mr. Weerwilly.

"When the road comes up, the price comes up," Mr. Weerwilly said. "I have no money. I am a pee-sant. I have to sell you my land." He began to laugh. "But what can you do in Jeronimo?"

"I can do what I want."

"You do not want very much."

I hated this man, I hated his loud voice. His thick tongue crowded his mouth and interfered with his words. He snatched at my knee and spit flew off his blubbery lips.

"I am working with my hands alone," he said. "The fruit company has machines. If I want to clear some land or thumsing I use a machete. The fruit has bulldozers. The fruit can spray insecticides from helicopters. Me, I have a little pump. The fruit pays the worker too much — two lemps a day. What can I do? For a stalk of bananas I get one lemp— one dollar only. One cent for an orange, and a grapefruit — one cent." He gargled his beer and said, "That is why I am starving. Ptooi. "

Father said to me, "He's not starving. He's got my money in his pocket."

"You are crazy," Mr. Weerwilly said.

I said, "I think I'll go inside."

"You go, Karl," Mr. Weerwilly said. "Bye-bye."

"Stay where you are," Father said to me. "Ask him if he's got my money in his pocket."

I began to ask, but Mr. Weerwilly made an ugly clownish face at me and squeezed my leg. "Know why I like this man, Karl? Because he hates the fruit. And because he is not a missionary. And he can make sings."

"Songs?" I said.

"Sings!" Mr. Weerwilly said. "He tells me how I can carry water up to my terraces. Even my friends don't tell me that. So I like him. Also, he pays cash."

"You're the witness, Charlie," Father said. "Remember that."

"But we are different," Mr. Weerwilly said. "You are an American imperialist. You take my land. I am a poor Communist, just a little pee-sant. I have to sell you. Now I have my house and some few trees."

Mr. Weerwilly went on talking. He repeated himself and lisped and spat and drank beer. The time passed slowly. Why did Father insist that I sit here, with the rain spattering around us?

Mr. Weerwilly said, "But I know why you are taking that pretty woman and those children to Jeronimo. Because you are crazy."

"You heard the lady," Father said. "Like a fox."

"And here you can buy food for nothing. You wear a shirt only. You can get a girl for five lemps. "

"Watch it, Weerwilly," he said, and gave the man a wild grin.

Father pointed angrily with his blown-off finger and made Mr. Weerwilly flinch. I suppose the man mistook Father's blunt finger on the fist for the barrel of a gun. Mr. Weerwilly's hand went to his shirt.

Father said, "Charlie, ask the man where his contract is." I asked this question.

"Sank you," Mr. Weerwilly said. "You help me to remember this sing." He took an envelope from inside his shirt and let it plop on the table.

Father tore it open. But I was not looking at him. I was staring at Mr. Weerwilly. When he parted his shirt to remove the envelope, his hand had brushed a black leather holster that was strapped across his chest.

"He is in such a hurry."

Father said, "It looks like a Harvard diploma."

"Spanish," Mr. Weerwilly said.

"I can read," Father said.

I could not take my eyes off the holster bulge in Mr. Weerwilly's shirt.

"He sinks I cheat him."

Father read it closely, frowning, pushing his finger stump across the page. Then he said, "It's been a pleasure to do business with you."

Mr. Weerwilly finished his beer and belched. He stood up and gripped my hair and twisted my head so that I was facing him. He smiled at me in his ugly way and said, "Perhaps he is not so crazy."

Then he laughed, touching the bulge in his shirt.

When he had gone, Father said, "Thanks for sticking around, Charlie. Isn't he a sad case? He was drunk. I didn't think he was going to give it to me. He could have walked away with my money." Father folded the paper and returned it to the envelope. "He was playing hard-to-get."

I said, "He had a gun."

"Correct. He thought he had the drop on me."

"Weren't you frightened?"

He took my hand tenderly. His own hand was hot and gummy and trembled over mine. He said, "Nope."

He let go and reached for the envelope.

"I got what I wanted."

"Some land?"

"Jeronimo," Father said.

"A town?"

"Wipe that grin off your face," he said. "It's a small town."

The rain squittered on the roof and beat on the hedge of hibiscus flowers, making the blossoms nod. It blackened the sand and drummed on Tosco's Chevrolet, and thunder boomed on the inky sea.

"Still," Father said, "I'll be the mayor."

We sat until the rain let up, then Mother and the kids joined us, and Tosco served us our dinner here on the piazza.

Jerry said, "We saw a dead cow," and told Father how a dog had been eating it by the roadside, watched by vultures "with beaks like potato peelers." Clover and April described the dead dog on the road, and the vultures there, jostling to peck pieces out of the carcass. Clover said, "They kept on beaking him until it made me feel sick."

"Father's not impressed," Mother said.

"I can't bear those birds."

Mother told him about the roads, how you drove on ruts and trenches, how you had to cross a railway bridge on the slippery tracks and loose planks, and then it was too rocky to go any further; how one road led to a quarry and another to the sea, and how the roads were not roads, and how after less than a mile you came to trees, or a dog, and usually a dead one. The roads led nowhere.

"I'll drink to that," Father said.

Clover said, "And people go to the bathroom on the street. Yes," she protested, because April had started to giggle. "I saw one!"

"That's good for the rhubarb." Father said.

"All we saw was bananas." Clover said.

"He's still smiling," Mother said.

"Tell them the news, Charlie."

I said, "Dad bought a town."

"A small one," he said.

"You're joking," Mother said.

"Here's the deed," he said. "And I can show you the place on a map. The name's right there in black and white — looks about the size of South Hadley. A drunken German sold it to me. He tried to grow bananas there, but lack of transport made the whole thing uneconomical. Anyway, he was probably drunk as a dog — I wouldn't send him out for sandwiches. He was glad to get rid of it. Best of all, the whole thing's secret. There's no road, and no one goes there. There's a few savages, but apart from them, only sunshine."

Jerry said, "I'll bet there's a dead dog there."

"Maybe a live dog," Father said. "But no dogcatcher. No policemen, no telephone, no electricity, no airfield — nothing. It's about as unimportant as a place can possibly be. That German was damning it, but it all sounded like praise to me. You talk about starting from scratch. Well, Jeronimo is scratch."

"How do we get there?" Mother asked.

"Don't confuse me with trivial questions," Father said. "But I've said enough. Except for that German, there's not a single soul between here and the Land Office who knows where we're going. From that point of view, it's better than a desert island." Up went his finger stump. "Mum's the word."

Just then, a car drew up to The Gardenia and parked in a puddle. Four women in bright dresses got out. They had long black hair and carried handbags. They walked across the piazza to the bar at the end. I recognized their laughter.