Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

"The Indians say there is no path over the mountains."

"They would, wouldn't they? Listen, you won't get a road map from them."

"How far is it to your village?"

"A day's march. More — if you're carrying ice. But that's our problem."

"You will be home by nightfall."

Father said suddenly, "I've got half a mind to blow this place wide open and get you the hell out of here."

"That would be very foolish," the man said, and did not blink.

"Then it's up to you."

"Go," the man said, "or they will punish us."

We were given a calabash of wabool, and water, and a bunch of bananas. While we filled our water bag from a gourd, the three skinny men went over to the Indians. The Indians remained squatting on the ground, but their dogs ran away as the men approached. They did not begin barking until they had reached the rooty edge of the clearing. Without their dogs, the Indians looked nakeder and even a little afraid.

We left them like that, the Indians squatting, the three slaves standing. The dogs bounded forward and retreated, chasing us to the stream. They barked and stretched and showed us their wild cowardly eyes. All the other men were motionless. They were small beneath the vast hanging forest, watching us walk away. The women had not returned. The men looked as if they were posing for an oldfangled frightening picture.

On the trail, Father said, "What I can't make out is how they got there in the first place."

"Twahkas, Fadder?"

"No. The others." He used a Spanish word, "The nameless ones." Bucky said, "These jungles is fulla monkeys."

"Monkeys don't ask that many questions—"

Neither do slaves, I thought.

"— Something weird's coming down here, people."

We climbed out of the forest and behind the rock steeples and up the path we had made to the ridge of the mountains. Then, where we had made camp last night, we stopped again and passed the wabool around. We sat on the broken ice sled we had left, the remains of Skidder. Father said that someday a foreigner would find it and proclaim that a great civilization had existed here, and put Skidder in a museum. This made him laugh.

"And did you see those Indians' faces when they saw the ice?"

We looked at him.

"They almost keeled over." He began to chuckle at the thought of it.

Jerry was searching Father's face.

"They couldn't believe it," Father said. "They were goggling. Flabbergasted and confounded!"

Finally — because everyone else was perfectly silent — I said, "What ice?"

"The ice I showed them."

I believed he was testing me again. I said, "It all melted, Dad."

"That small piece," he said.

This was not true.

"You saw it, didn't you Jerry?"

"Yes, Dad."

I thought, Crummo.

"Your long-faced brother's trying to tell me we wasted our time. You need glasses, Charlie. You've got bad eyes. Probably an astigmatism, eh Francis?"

"For true," the loyal Zambu said.

Father put Jerry on his back and carried him, while I walked behind with the Zambus. The Zambus' tiredness showed in their faces. It had been a bewildering trip for them, the more so because they had expected the Twahkas to have tails — and maybe they did think the three skinny men were Munchies. There was a grayness on the Zambus' bodies, and smudges on the gray, like the cloudy surface of purple grape skins. As we walked, they became more certain that they had seen the ice and the amazed Indians. "It is smuck in Fadder's hand like a rock-stone."

Father said, "It's all downhill from now on."

ON THIS downward path, in the tortoiseshell twilight, I thought of Father's lie. I hoped he did not believe it, but how could he be rescued from repeating it?

Something like this might work — perhaps, in our two-day absence, things had not gone right in Jeronimo — perhaps some small problem had arisen, enough to interrupt him, not a disaster but a hitch, to prevent him from giving a loud speech saying our failure had been a success.

The Indians had not been flabbergasted! They had only squinted at us and at Father's wet fingers, and sent out their slaves.

His lie made me lonelier than any he I had ever heard.

Yet he had spoken it confidently and said the expedition was a triumph and he couldn't wait to tell Mother. Again and again I tried to remember ice in Father's hands and amazement on the faces of the Indians. But there was none: no ice, no surprise. It had all been worse and odder than his lie. They had told us to go away, and then the skinny slaves were peering at us and the dogs trying to bite our feet.

"Gaw, I love to walk home tired at the end of a good day with the sun in my eyes!"

Ahead, on the path, Father went on talking to the Zambus and Jerry.

"You can pack a man in ice and crisp him like celery and snap him out of sunstroke. That ought to be a useful application around here. And did I ever tell you about the advances in cryogenics?"

His voice tore through the trees and exhausted me. His confidence was something I did not want to hear now. I dreaded the thought of Father repeating his story in Jeronimo. And his lie scared me. Did you see those Indians faces? But the Indians' faces were confused, they had monkey wrinkles, and they had tried to frighten us away by showing us black teeth like their dogs. Once I had believed that Father was so much taller than me that he saw things I missed. I excused adults who disagreed with me, and blamed myself because I was so short. But this was something I could judge. I had seen it. Lies made me uncomfortable, and Father's lie, which was also a blind boast, sickened me and separated me from him.

"Charlie's back there doing the best he can, people!"

I loved this man, and he was calling me a fool and falsifying the only world I knew.

I prayed for a hitch. My prayers were answered. Things were not right in Jeronimo. It was what I had wished, but, like most wishes that are granted, more than I bargained for.

Jeronimo was struck with quietness and a thin flutter of leaves. It had always softened and collapsed in twilight: it was the way the sun was strained through the trees, the way it glanced in weak glimmers off the river. It was the dust stirring. It was the way people were round-shouldered after such a long day of light and no clouds.

But this evening it was deadened. It had an atmosphere of disappearance and hiding alarm that said something had just happened, like the silence after a howl. There was a low skreak and skrittle of lizards watching from the undergrowth, and on the branches birds locating perches for the night, their polite strut at sundown.

Father halted us and said, "Somebody's been here and gone."

Fat Boy was not alight. The Maywit's house was black — none of their normal lanterns — open windows, empty porch, no smoke.

"Allie." It was Mother — her white waiting face in the Gallery.

Father walked toward her and asked her what was going on.

She said, "I thought something had happened to you, too."

"Too?"

"The Maywits — they're gone. I couldn't stop them."

Father said "I knew it," and smiled at Francis Lungley.

But I felt responsible. I had prayed for something to happen, and it had. Anything to prevent Father from bursting into Jeronimo and lying about flabbergasted Indians and ice and you should have seen their faces.

Now Father was smiling at Clover. She had run from under the house and was hugging him and explaining.

"A motorboat came and took all the Maywits away. The man called you names. It was the missionary you sent back that day. Ma Kennywick yelled at him and Mr. Peaselee busted the pump and Ma said you were going to run wild when you hear about it. But you're not, are you? Dad, was it spooky!"