Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

Disorder here was this noise, loudest at night, and the worst of it cracking out in the darkest places. Some of it was like spurts from a broken hose pipe. I listened to the jungle being torn apart. These hidden creatures, and even some trees, had voices. They sounded their loud wakeful fear throughout the night, stirred by the fire that was stirring the whole sky. I was blind and the world was falling down like the dew around me. There seemed no remedy for it, to plug it or calm it or make it sleep. It all roared at me. Hope left me then, and wide-awake I began to worry. This was not solitude but rather a nightmare of damage an iron wheel that drove on and on monotonous noise in the timeless dark, scattering feathers and claws.

But Father was wise to these crowding sounds. Nights like this, which worried me, had filled his head with schemes. So when dawn came, I knew him better and feared him more than I had at the stunning ruin of Jeronimo.

"Let him sleep," Mother said. I was amazed that he was still at it: I had never seen him sleep so soundly.

He lay on his side, in a hedgehog posture, with his arms over his face and his knees drawn up — a bundle of grumbling snores. Flies had settled on his shirt, and they scratched undisturbed on the wrinkles and seemed to play, he was so still. No one spoke, no one wanted to hear what he would say when he woke up.

It was day now. I felt sick and small under the quivering trees.

In the dry-season dawn, the leaves seemed to die as the sun hit them. The dew dried on the grass, and the blades withered and were lighted like gold thread under the rips of foil on the boughs. Freed of the dampness and dark, the dust on the ground penetrated the air with a yellow smell of decay that was sweet this first hour of daylight. The rising sun heated each live thing it struck, and stiffened it and gilded it with death. There were lovely brittle coins on the shining trees, and whole bushes of crisp gold flakes. As soon as the sun was sieved through the topmost branches, everything in the Acre was bright and dead around the black pool.

We waited, hardly breathing, for Father to wake. I dozed and watched the spiders near the pool, the way they plucked their webs like zithers to trap and tangle a struggling fly before they rushed the insect and wrapped it like a mummy. They hung the parcels of neatly bandaged flies in a high corner of the web, the way Indians here stored peppers and corn.

"Poor Dad," Clover whispered.

Mr. Haddy said, "His spearmint almost kill us."

"We're all right now," Mother said. "Charlie saved us."

"This isn't Charlie's camp. It's the Acre. It belongs to all of us," Jerry said. "The Maywit kids helped make those lean-tos. And Crummo gets all the credit!"

"You were blubbering last night," I said. "You were scared!"

"I wasn't!"

Mr. Haddy said, "But I were skeered! I was praying. I see death back there. That were wuss than a preacher's hell. Ruther have hurricanes and twisters than them fires. I see devils. I see Duppies dancing. I were so skeered I were glad to die."

Clover said, "What happened to those men, Ma?"

"They're gone."

"And if they ain't gone, we got trouble for true," Mr. Haddy said, and he repeated, "For too-roo!"

I said, "I saw them go."

"Don't think about it, Charlie." Mother hugged me. "We're safe now. Your father's going to be grateful when he wakes up."

"What's Dad doing? " April said.

His sleep made us helpless. It prevented us from moving. As long as he lay there we could not leave. It was then that we were reminded how important he was to us. We had only known him awake. It was frightening to see him so still. If he was dead, we were lost.

The sun, now overhead, was burning on his back. People sleeping give off an underground smell, a boiled root stink of dirt and food and sweat and wounds — the way I imagined corpses steamed, like heated compost. Father was motionless. He might have been making up for all the nights he'd stayed awake. But he looked and smelled dead.

April said, "Ma, are we going to die?"

Mother said, "Don't be silly." She found our baskets and helped us gather yautia and guavas and wild avocados. She praised our camp, she said it was a good job — it had saved our lives.

Seeing the yautia, Mr. Haddy said, "You kids like eddoes? Me ma make eddoes!"

Father swung over and jumped to his feet.

"Let's go," he said. He sank to his knees.

It was early afternoon. He had slept almost thirteen hours, but no one mentioned the time. "Liars, swindlers, degenerates who sleep till noon" — those were some of the people he hated. He had always told us that deep sleep was a form of illness, and he blamed us when we overslept.

He sat down on the gold grass and dropped his hands into his lap. "What are you looking at?"

His voice was flat, dull, different, almost drugged, and very small. He hardly moved his lips. He seemed very tired, and yet I had watched him all night, lying there sound asleep.

Mother knelt down and touched his face. She said, "Your hair is singed."

His eyebrows were stubble, his beard was burned and so were his eyelashes. It gave him a startled sausagey expression. One side of his face was pink and creased, with a sleep map pressed on it. One eye was redder than the other. He pulled on his baseball hat.

"I had an awful night. Hardly slept a wink."

Mr. Haddy said, "I see dogs twitch more than you done! You were sleeping like a slope — wunt he, Ma?"

Father said, "I've got no patience with liars in the morning."

Then he sniffed and came alert, as if he had just heard something. The smell of smoke and ammonia was still strong in the air, with burned bamboo and roasted tin. Father sighed. His face cracked. He smiled sadly, remembering.

"It's finished," he said, in his beaten voice.

"All your work," Mother said. Still kneeling, she started to cry. "I'm so sorry, Allie."

"I'm happy," Father said. "Jeronimo is destroyed."

Mr. Haddy said, "She went up like crackers."

Father said, "We're free."

Mother protested. "Everything you made is gone," she said. "All the houses, the crops, those wonderful machines. All that work—"

"Traps," Father said. "I should never have done it."

"How were you to know?"

"I'm the only one who could have known. It wasn't ignorance; it was subtlety. But that's always been my problem. I'm too elaborate, too ambitious. I can't help being an idealist. I was trying to defuse the situation peaceably. It blew up in my face."

"Allie, why—"

"And I deserved it. Toxic substances — this is no place for them. I'll never work with poisons again, and no more flammable gas. Keep it simple — physics, not chemistry. Levers, weights, pulleys, rods. No chemicals except those that occur naturally. Stable elements—"

Mother sobbed, "But those men are dead!"

"Tempered in the fires, Mother."

Clover said, "That's what I was just wondering."

"But not gone. Matter cannot be destroyed. Ask Figgy. They requested the transformation. Scavengers like them deserve the turkey treatment—"

Mother had put her fingers over her eyes. She wept softly as Father stood up.

"I thought I was building something," he said. "But I was asking for it to be destroyed. That's a consequence of perfection in this world — the opposing wrath of imperfection. Those scavengers wanted to feed on us! And Fat Boy failed me. The concept was wrong, and now I know why — no more poison, Mother."

He said this in almost a whining way, with his hands locked together. He went to the pool and poked the water.

He said, "Anybody can break anything in this world. America was brought low by little men."

He sounded as if his heart was broken. He raised some water in his cupped hands and washed his face and arms. "Where are we? What is this place?"