Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

"I was sent here," Father said. "I'm not going to tell you who sent me, or why. And I'm not going to tell you who I am or what I aim to do. That's just talk. I'm going to show you why I'm here. You go ahead and watch. And if you don't like what you see, you can kill me."

Tiredness had made his voice harsh. He hissed this again ("You can kill me"), then let it sink in. There were murmurs. Mr. Haddy scratched his big toe and said he would not dare do such a thing as kill Father, though he was sure hoping to get his launch fixed pretty soon.

Father resumed, saying, "I didn't come here to boss you around. I came here to work for you. If I'm not working hard enough, you just tell me, and I'll work harder. You come up to me and say, 'Mister, you've got to do a whole lot better than this.' I'm working for you people, and you're going to see things you've never seen before. What do you want me to do first? It's up to you."

No one spoke.

"You want some food?" Father said. "You want a bridge and some beans and a paddle pump and a chicken run?" Mr. Maywit cleared his throat.

"I heard you," Father said. "I'll obey. And those Indians up in the hills are going to look down here and they're not going to believe their eyes. They're going to be absolutely feverish with amazement."

Every listener was transfixed. The only sounds were from the jungle, and here and there a smack when mosquitoes were slapped. Beyond our tents and our little fire, the jungle was black. The blackness screeched, it grunted — it had risen up and wrapped us in its noise and in its sweet-sour folds. The hidden insects were excited and the darkened trees made a sound like brooms.

"Now let's get to bed," Father said, "before we all get bitten alive."

But he remained by the fire.

"Ain't you sleeping?" Mr. Haddy said.

Father said, "I never sleep!"

***

The next day we planted the miracle beans. Father made a ceremony of it. He lined up the men and had them dig with homemade shovels — planks that Father had planed into blades. Mr. Haddy did not dig. He said, "I ain't a farmer — I am a sailor." And Father said, "He doesn't want to get his prehensile fingers dirty." The men stood shoulder-to-shoulder, stabbing the dirt. It was not difficult. The German Weerwilly had had a garden here — most of his beanpoles were still standing.

By mid-afternoon we had turned over an acre of weeds. Father dragged out his bean seeds. They were called miracle beans, he said, because they were a forty-day variety. The first ones he planted he gave names. "This is Captain Haddy," he said, and held up a bean. "This is Francis," and he held up another one. Then he poked them into the holes. "This one is Mr. Maywit. This is Charlie. This is Jerry—"

He straddled the furrows and when he ran out of names, he planted faster. Half the field was miracle beans, the rest was Wonder Corn and tomatoes and peppers — the seeds we had bought in Florence, Massachusetts. It rained in the afternoon. Father said he had been expecting it. That was part of the ceremony, too, he said.

Mother said to him, when we were alone that night, "Aren't you laying it on a little thick, Allie?"

But Father just laughed and said that it had been his intention to get us out of the States and save us. He had not thought that he would be saving other people as well. Yet that was what had happened. If we had not come here, these people would have been bone-idle, and the vultures would have made a meal of them.

"I want to give people a chance to use their know-how," Father said.

The following day, he asked Mr. Maywit what his occupation was.

"I been a sexton in my time. Up in Limon," Mr. Maywit said. And he explained. "Polish the brasses, make em shine. Set out vesmins. Hang the numbers on the board. Tidy out the pews."

Father looked discouraged.

"Also I kin do some barbering."

"Hair cutting?"

"Cutting and dressing. And ironing hair. And twisting. Heating it flat. And I know how to wax — flows."

Small night rats, called pacas, gnawed through the corners of the nylon tents. We ate the pacas. They were good-tasting, and Father said it was poetic justice. We made a wooden platform for the tents to keep their floors dry and hold the tents straight — the stakes had not held in the wet ground. Down at the river we made a trap that funneled fish into a wire cage, and from a simple roof and frame and some of the mosquito netting we built a mosquito-proof gazebo where we could congregate. These were gadgets, not inventions, but they made life more comfortable, and within very few days I could see the skeleton of a settlement in Jeronimo.

Every evening, the Zambus turned their backs on us and crept into the jungle. Every morning, looking wrinkled and damp, they reappeared. They had a camp there, Father said. Toward the end of the first week, Mr. Haddy left Jeronimo with some of the Zambus. Mr. Haddy did not come back immediately, but the Zambus did, towing log rafts on harnesses Father had made for them. On these rafts were the last of our supplies from Little Haddy.

The boilers, the tanks, and the rest of the scrap metal were dragged away and stacked. Some of the pipes Father used for his first real invention at Jeronimo — a simple paddle wheel that moved a belt of coconut cups up a tower on the riverbank and filled a drum with water. The height of the drum gave it enough force to pipe the water anywhere we liked, but most of it went to an enclosed shed that became known as the bathhouse. We washed clothes there, and took showers, and boiled water for drinking, and altogether it improved our lives.

The excess water flowed through a stone culvert and under the bathhouse to a privy at the edge of the clearing, where our latrine stood. The privy was always clean, but the Maywits' latrine was mucky and so fly-blown that Father said, "Anyone who uses that throne is Lord of the Flies."

The first invention, a pump made on the spot, was a piece of primitive technology. The Maywits and Zambus were greatly impressed by its flapping and splashing, but they said they could not understand why Father had made such a thing in the rainy season, when there was water everywhere.

"We're building for the future, the dry season," Father said. He said it was a civilized thing to do. "And know why it's a perfect invention?"

"Cause you ain't have to walk down there with a bucket," Mr. Maywit said.

"That's blindingly obvious," Father said. "No, it's perfect because it's self-propelled, uses available energy, and it's nonpolluting. Make one of these up in Massachusetts and they'd have you certified. But they're not interested in perfection."

Some days later, after a heavy rain, the river rose and the paddle wheel was torn off its brackets and rods. Father strengthened it with metal straps and it continued to supply us with water and went on sluicing the latrine.

Each time he made something, Father said, "This is why I'm here."

It was Father's policy that no one should be idle. "If you see me sit down, you can do the same," he said. But he even ate standing up. Part of the beanfield was divided into plots — one plot for each kid, who had to keep his portion weeded. There were other tasks assigned to us, such as collecting firewood and keeping the fish trap mucked out. And when our chores were done we were to gather stones the size of hen's eggs and use them for paving the paths. So there was always something to do, which was perhaps just as well because it took our minds off the heat and the insects. And the uncertainty, too, for though Father said confidently, "This is why I'm here," we did not know why we were, and were too scared to ask.

The work in the first few weeks was mostly land clearing. The process of clearing the land of bushes and small trees revealed more of Weerwilly's activities and uncovered some of the implements he had abandoned. We found a plow and bales of chicken wire and any number of small tools, a lantern that worked pretty well, and an oil drum with enough fuel in it to last us for months. These discoveries filled Father with enthusiasm and convinced him that Weerwilly had failed because he was careless, like the people in America who junked perfectly good lumber and wire. And he said that if the Maywits had been a little sharper, they would have found this stuff and used it themselves to improve the place, instead of playing Lord of the Flies.