Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

"Fine by me," Father said. "How about this? Shall we put in here?"

Mother said yes, the twins agreed, and even Jerry was reconciled in a kind of stupid moody way. They were all beaten flat by Father, the heat had gotten to them — their brains were poached by the sun and river steam, like fish flakes in a skillet.

"No," I said, "let's go on." I swung my bamboo pole and pretended I was still full of beans.

This made Father glad. He used me as his excuse to keep going. He heaved his pole and said, "If it wasn't for you, Charlie, I would have made camp back there. Good drainage and a gravelly shore. I'm amazed. I think I've finally succeeded with you. Fourteen years old, and at last you're showing some backbone."

But I wanted to reach Guampu. How had Father forgotten that name? Maybe because he hated to think about the past, the mistakes and failures. Turn your back and walk away fast — that was his motto. Invent any excuse for going. Just clear out. It had made him what he was — it was his genius. Don't look back. Yet for me the past was the only real thing, it was my hope — the very v/ord future frightened me. The future spoke to Father, but for me it was silent and blind and dark. Guampu was part of the past, and with this name in mind I pestered him to push further up the river.

Father believed we were moving into the future. I felt the opposite — as if we might get a glimpse of the past. Anyway it was not far, and even if I was wrong I wanted the satisfaction of knowing whether or not my memory had tricked me.

Five days after leaving the Thurtles' village, at about noon, we heard an airplane. Its rumble-buzz came near. Though we could not see it, it brought me a familiar feeling: a plane going overhead was like getting a haircut. I ducked when I heard it, and I felt its shimmying teeth on the back of my neck. Father denied it was a plane. Crosswinds, he said. But he went silent — his face looked as if he had just sat on something like wet grass or cowflap. I was more hopeful then about Guampu.

I stayed at the bow, searching the river. There were pools of oil slick, little striped and hairy bruises stretching in the current. I spotted a green bottle on the gravel bottom, and a can of Diet Pepsi floating upright, and a kind of suds, like the froth from soap flakes. I saw a submerged sheet of paper curling as it went downstream, and more, and I thought of home, because each thrown-away thing was part of the past. This was the trash of that other world. It looked wonderful to me.

That same day, I heard singing — music muffled by trees. The water picked it up, and so did the light, the heat, the changes in the sky. I waited for someone else to speak.

"Allie." Mother listened. She had heard it.

"Birds."

It was not birds. It was church music.

Jerry said, "Who's singing?"

"Savages," Father said.

I said, "But this might be Guampu."

We rounded a bend, the jungle fell away, the sun was full on the bank. Set back from the river were bungalows with shiny corrugated roofs of new iron that caught the sun and flashed at us. At the center of the large clearing was a wooden white-framed church, with a steep roof and a belfry. It was all glorious and orderly and clean, a white harbor among the loopy trees and wild vines, standing straight on this crooked river.

Father's face was black. Paper peels of skin had burst on his nose and cheeks and left hot patches. He had seen the bungalows, the church, the flowerbeds. He lowered his head, looking double-crossed, and sweat dripped down his neck like fury.

"It must be a mission," Mother said. Then, sensing Father's rage — the smell he gave off when he was angry — she said no more.

A mooring lay ahead of us. It was a little dock of planks fixed to a row of oil drums. A Boston whaler with a fringed awning and some smaller dinghies were tied up.

Clover said, "Where are we, Dad?"

Father's mouth was shut tight, but there was fire in his eyes, the energy he called hunger. He clawed at his long hair and jammed his pole into the river, pushing us nearer the place, nearer the singing, and another sound — a generator chugging in a shed by the riverside. This was the back end of the mission. We saw a sewer pipe emptying into the river, and a little hill of bottles and cans and colored paper — more hope.

The singing stopped. Now there was only the generator.

We worked our way to the mooring. How lumpy and black our hut-boat looked next to the sleek hull of the whaler, with its yellow awning. What was our boat except a tarred and floating wreck of scavenged wood? It was ridiculous here, and made Father seem like a madman.

"We'll see about this." Father's voice was sand in a rusty bucket.

Mother lost her nerve then. She said, "Let's go on — let's leave it. It's got nothing to do with us. Allie, no!"

"They have real houses," April said.

"Look, there's a backboard," Jerry said. "They play basketball!"

I braced myself and said, "It's the Spellgoods."

"Booshwah!"

Mother said, "Tell us what you know, Charlie."

"The Spellgoods — don't you remember? They said they lived in Guampu. Emily said so. That preacher, with the family, from the—"

"Who's Emily?"

"One of the girls. She was on the Unicorn. The people who prayed."

"I knew it was savages," Father said.

"Allie, maybe they can help us."

"We don't need help!"

"We're filthy. Look at us."

Father said, "Those moral sneaks have been hiding here, polluting this place. You'd think they'd have more sense. There's no more world left!"

He leaped to the mooring and rocked on the planks in anger.

"I've got news for these people."

We followed him — chased him — up the stairs to where paths were laid out with borders of whitewashed stones. There were no more than ten bungalows, but they were neat, with flowerbeds in front of the piazzas and a vapory shimmer of heat rising from their metal roofs. Beyond them was a runway of mown grass, a landing strip cut into the jungle. But there was no plane, and no people came to meet us. We saw no one.

But the shutters of the church were open, and now we heard what was certainly Rev. Spellgood's voice.

"Jee-doof," he said slowly.

"I'll knock his block off," Father said.

Jerry said, "Is this the future, too?"

"I'm going to remember that, sonny!" Father kicked at the whitewashed stones. "Keep behind me."

"Let's go back to the boat, Allie. Let's get out of here."

"She's afraid," Father said.

"I've never seen you so angry."

"That's right," Father said. "Belittle me in front of the kids."

Spellgood was preaching in a high-pitched parroty voice, quoting Scripture. Sam-yool, he said, and something about ten cheeses and the Philistine of Gath.

"He'll wish he was in Gath."

We looked through the open window. I waited for Father's yell. It didn't come — only a hiss of disgust that traveled from deep in his throat, like poison gas escaping from a pipe, like Fat Boy on the boil.

The church was shadowy, but at the front, propped up on a table and being watched by a whole congregation of Indians in white shirts and white dresses, was a television set.

The set had a large screen, about the size of a car door, and there was Spellgood's face yapping on the screen. He was in color, but greeny-yellow, holding a slingshot and telling a story. Beside him was a giant green man with a gorilla face, plastic-looking, with fangs and a helmet. As Spellgood preached, he fitted a stone into the slingshot and made ready to snap it at the giant dummy next to him.

"They have TV here," Jerry said.

The Indians were so amazed by the program that they did not see us. It was a miracle to them — it was a miracle to me.