Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

The Indians, hearing me say this, looked uncertain.

"And tell them it's too hot here in the sun. We want to sit in the shade."

I managed to explain this, though I had to ask Father some of the Spanish words.

The Indian who had spoken (but all he had said so far was "Go away") backed to the largest hut and went inside.

Father said, "He's going to ask the Gowdy if it's all right."

The Indian reappeared and gestured for us to sit near that hut.

"Friendly little critters, aren't they?" Father muttered as we sat down. "What are they trying to hide? My guess is that there's something here they don't want us to see. Frankly, I'd like to snoop around."

Tired and hungry as I was, I would have been glad to get out of this place, and I knew from Jerry's face that he felt the same. Father was unruffled, still the Sole Proprietor of Jeronimo, if not the King of Mosquitia, passing whispers to his Zambus with his allpowerful air. He did not seem to notice — or if he noticed, did not care — that the Indians had crept across the clearing and sat watching us from a semicircle with their drooling dogs.

"Sure, this place smells," Father was saying. "They've got no organization. But it's a healthy climate. Cooler than Jeronimo. Fertile soil. Not many bugs. Lots of hardwood. You could work miracles here, if—"

But Father shut his mouth when the food and water were brought. He seldom showed surprise at anything, so his sudden silence now was as startling as one of his howls. It was the men who carried the gourds and baskets to us. He gaped at them, and, with his teeth clenched like a ventriloquist, said, "Will you look at that!"

Three skinny men, not Indians, stood over us. They were pale gray under their dirt and whiskers. Father whistled softly as he sized them up. They were tall and bony and looked bruised. They wore ragged trousers and broken sandals. Two of them had headbands, the sort worn by some of the Indians. Their faces were feverish and sunken, their skulls pressed against their sallow-gray skin. Their beards and bones made me think of saints in a picture book. But they were almost smiling, and as they placed the food before us they watched us closely with curious eyes.

"What did I tell you?" Father said to us. "This is what they didn't want us to see. They keep white slaves!"

The food was boiled bananas, flat greasy corncakes, fritters, and wabool. The water tasted of dog fur.

"Now it all makes sense! Hey," he said to one of the men in Spanish, "do you let these Indians tell you what to do?"

"More or less." The man did not seem concerned. He kept his feverish smile.

"What do you do for them?"

"We shine their shoes."

Father laughed at this. "You haven't lost your sense of humor." He passed the gourd of wabool to Jerry, without tasting it.

The Indians looked on from across the clearing, their heads lowered. The only sound from that direction was the growl of the dogs chewing fleas out of their gouged and scarred hindquarters.

"What is your name?"

One man wet his lips at Father's question, but another with stringy hair said, "We do not have names."

"Hear that? They don't have names."

Father glowered at the Indians. All around us in the tall trees, birds tooted and beat the leaves with their wings, and the sound of the stream was like the sound of tumbling boulders.

"Probably captured them down the pike and made them prisoners," Father said to Francis Lungley. "So these guys do all the dirty work."

"Gringo," one of the men said, hearing Father speak English. His starved face gave him a fine-lined expression that was both haunted and kindly. "North American, eh? Are you from the mission?"

"Do I look like a missionary?" Then Father whispered to him, so that the Indians would not hear. "No. We've got a settlement over the mountains. If you could get over there — slip out some night — you'd be safe. That's the best way to the coast."

The man nodded and passed his hand through his beard.

"Why did you come here?"

"I was just going to say. I brought some ice — half a ton. Well, almost. These Zambus and me. Those two are my boys, Charlie and Jerry. Wipe your mouth, Charlie."

"Where is this ice?"

"Melted."

The man smiled.

"You don't believe me?"

"Ice," the man said in Spanish to the others, and now they all smiled. The three men knelt before Father, and the first man said, "Where did you get your ice?"

"Made it," Father said. He took a small suck of wabool from the gourd. "You should see what we've got over there. Gardens, food, water pumps, chickens, drainage, and the biggest ice-making machine in the country."

"You have a generator for electricity?"

"Don't mention generators to me. Tell him, Charlie."

I explained that Father had devised a method of making ice out of fire.

"Your father is an intelligent man."

"Everyone says that," I said.

Father said, "They'll work you to death here. Then, when you're not useful to them any longer, they'll kill you and feed you to the vultures. They'll get some new slaves." Father's face darkened. "You think they'll try anything funny with us?"

The man said, "Who knows?" and the other men nodded.

"I want to walk out of here wearing my head," Father said. "Do you think those Indians are listening to us?"

"They listen but they do not understand. They are very simple people. They are also very strong."

"So I gather. But you shouldn't be here, waiting on them hand and foot. They haven't any right to own you. You're prisoners, aren't you?"

The man who had done all the talking shrugged. The shrug shook his whole loose-jointed body. He seemed untroubled, or else beyond caring.

Father said, "Notice I'm not eating much? I'll tell you why. Because I've got an enormous appetite. By not eating, I do other things better. Solve problems. Work hard. That's a form of eating, too. You should try it. If I ate, I wouldn't do anything else—"

All this time, the Zambus were eating and hardly listening to what Father was saying. Father seemed glad for someone new to talk to. Maybe it took his mind off the failure of our expedition.

The men whispered among themselves, then one who had not spoken before said, "You are not telling the truth, are you — about the ice?"

"Practically an iceberg," Father said. "It melted to mud, but there's a whole lot more where that came from. We've got everything over there."

"Guns?"

"I've got no use for guns. If I needed them, I could make an arsenal. But that's desperate."

But, he said, they reminded him of how he had felt in the States — like a prisoner, close to despair, murderous, half loco. It was frustration at the way things were shaking down, something like slavery, because the system made men into slaves.

"What did I do? I picked myself up and went away. I advise you to do the same."

The Indians were squatting with their ugly dogs thirty feet away. They watched Father talking to the skinny men. It was impossible for me to tell what the Indians were thinking by looking into the smooth clay of their faces. The Indians might have been harmless, but the dogs were part of their group. The dogs' fierceness made the Indians seem dangerous.

"They want you to go," the stringy-haired man said.

"They don't know what's good for them," Father said. "They don't deserve ice, or anything else, if they can't show common courtesy. But you," he said, "you're friendly enough."

"That is our nature."

"My Zambus probably think you're Munchies."

"Ah, Mosquitia!"

Father said, "I wish I could do something for you."

"It would be helping us if you did not anger the Indians. If you simply went away."

"Listen, one dark night you ought to get yourselves out of here. Do that. Clear out." In English, Father added, "Get the drop on them."