Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

"He is a very sensible man."

"I do what I can."

"He understands."

"When I saw you up there in that — was it a Twahka village? — I took you for prisoners."

The men smiled and slapped the insects away from their cheeks and ears. Holding the lantern this way. Father was tormenting the men.

"I thought, 'Slaves!'"

The men laughed as they fanned the insects away.

"But you were the guests of those Indians," Father said. "And now you are our guests. Look—"

A mosquito had settled on Father's arm. He allowed it to stay there a moment, and then he brought his hand down on it. He showed the men the squashed mosquito, the smear of blood.

"Dead! But don't feel sorry for him. That's not his blood — it is my blood!"

The men stepped back. Father had wiped the blood on his finger stump.

"This is Mosquitia!" Father said.

"You are right. There are more creatures here than in the mountains of Olancho."

"The Mosquito Coast is full of surprises," Father said. "That is why we like it, right, Mr. Haddy?"

"I sleeping on me lanch, Fadder."

"You do that, Figgy. Charlie, you take Jerry into the house or you'll be eaten alive—"

We started toward the house, which was now the only complete building in Jeronimo. Jerry took my hand — he was worried, his hand was damp. He tossed his head to keep the mosquitoes away.

"— and you gentlemen can use the bunkhouse."

Jerry said, "What bunkhouse is he talking about?" — Father had said the word in English—"We don't have a bunkhouse."

The lantern was swinging — Father was leading the men to Fat Boy. In the circle of mothy light he raised the ladder to the hatchway entrance on top.

Some minutes later, Father was at the screen door of the Gallery, talking as he entered.

"They want food. Put it in this pail, Mother, and I'll bring it across."

He jangled the pail down, and Mother ladled wabool into it. Then she made parcels of beans and rice, wrapping them in banana leaf, and put them into a basket.

"We're stuck with them," she said.

Father's face was blank, his long nose raw with sunburn. He stared at the floor where we were eating. It was as if he had run through all his moods on this confusing day and now had none left. He lifted his feet, and, letting them flap, he moved around the room like a goose.

He said, " Stuck with them? We're not stuck with anyone. If I believed things like that, we'd still be back in Hatfield." His voice was flat, he was still stepping back and forth across the floor. "No one who has the slightest spark is ever stuck with anyone in this world, or has to endure a minute of oppression. We proved that. Mother. We all choose our own thunderjug and sit on it and take the consequences."

Mother was smiling.

"Thunderjugs," Father said. "That's what we used to call chamber pots down in Maine."

***

It was after midnight, still so hot the grass and trees howled with insects. Frogs bellyrumbled in the shrunken river, and I could hear the current sucking at the reeds. These were the noises I heard the seconds after I woke. Father had put his hands on my face. In that darkness, I thought it was one of the men who had come to strangle me.

"Get your shoes on and follow me."

We had no lights, yet there was enough moonglow in the clearing for me to see the empty houses and the stacks of wood that had been torn from the roofs and floors. Jeronimo had been like this months ago, when we were building it — purple pickets in an empty crater, and the barracking crackle of the jungle.

Father carried a thick plank under his arm, but nothing else. It was a very clumsy weapon, if it was a weapon. We crossed to the cold store. The smell of damp chicken manure hung over it. Father knelt in the grass and drew breaths as if he was keeping count of them.

"I gave them every chance to go. Even offered them my cayuka." He crushed a mosquito and showed me the black stain on his finger, as he had done before. "Don't pity insects. That's my blood."

I nodded. I was afraid of the sound my voice would make.

"But they refused. You heard them. They're planning to fasten on us like they fastened on to those Indians. Remember those poor pathetic men, squatting in the dirt with their crazy mutts? Charlie, it was the Indians who were the prisoners!"

"They looked scared."

"Did they?" Father hung his head. "I'm not often wrong, but when I am, I'm as wrong as I can be."

This was a confession. I could not think of anything to say to make it easier for him.

"I don't usually make mistakes. You know that. But this is a lulu."

He was now staring at Fat Boy. He hunched his shoulders, and in the old hoarse joshing voice he used for testing me, he said, "Can you get up that ladder and shove this beam through the brackets on the hatchway door, without making a sound?"

"I guess so."

"You'd better be more certain than that, Charlie, because if you wake those bugs up they're going to start shooting."

He handed me the beam. It was heavy, but it smelted sweet, a roasted-nut aroma — it had been freshly sawed.

"You could get us all killed," he said.

I wanted to drop the beam and run.

"Up you go."

We crept to the ladder, and he took hold of it. I climbed past him and received a wave of heat from his body, the reddened sweat of his worry, which was like a vapor of blood in the air. Then I was cooled by the light breeze on the midsection of the ladder. I was glad it was dark — I could not see the ground clearly, only the moon-white flickers, like doves pecking in the grass, and gobs of putty-colored light on the trees. The fingers of my free hand were pale. They trembled on the rungs.

Nearer the hatchway, I imagined that I could hear the men snoring just inside Fat Boy, on the upper platform, in the tangle of pipes. Months before, I had seen these coils and pans, and I believed I had had a glimpse of Father's mind. I could not separate them, and now it seemed awful that these intruders were there, stinking and waiting and refusing to go. Men he hated had penetrated this private place.

There were iron bracket straps fixed to the jamb. Father must have hammered them there this afternoon. I had never seen them before. We had no locks in Jeronimo. This was the first.

I lifted the wood beam, set it against the door above the brackets, and slid it down. It was a perfect fit. But as soon as I did it, I realized how final it was. It had sealed the door — barricaded it, as Father would have said. My legs went weak and began to wobble. I descended the ladder quickly, expecting that at any moment there would be a crash, and gunfire.

"Stand back."

Father moved the ladder away from Fat Boy and eased it into the grass. He put his mouth against my head.

"You didn't climb that ladder."

His breath scalded my ear.

"You didn't bar that door."

He took my arm and squeezed it.

"We don't have any locks in Jeronimo."

He had gripped my arm so tightly I thought the bone would snap. He was leading me to the firebox. We had no shadows.

"I wanted you here to test your eyes. My guess is that they're as good as mine. I'll bet you can see the same things I can. Look there."

Still holding my arm in his left hand, he motioned with his other hand. Beyond the blunt finger stump was the firebox.

"Somebody's left a fire burning," he said.

But there was no fire.

I said, "I can't see it."

My hand went dead. He was squeezing hard.

"Look," he said, and struck a match and put it to a packed mass of kindling. It was all prepared — kindling, sticks, twigs, cut limbs, and split logs on top. "Somebody lit a fire here — and I told them not to."

"Yes."

He released my arm, but I could not feel a thing in my hand. It was as if, in the dark, he had pinched it off.