The Lower River

by Paul Theroux

  When he had soothed her, she resumed crooning, a new song now, the Beatles again, he didn’t know the name. As she sang in her throat and her nose, groaning, moving just perceptibly to the music, she steadied herself, slipped her hand between his legs and pressed, and he almost fainted with pleasure. He let go of her breast, put his mouth on her neck, and was glad for the darkness.

  The Sena had a peculiar way of eating, not just gathering the lump of steamed dough and splashing it into the stew, as other Malawians did. Instead—perhaps to prolong the anticipation of eating, they were always so hungry, and food was so scarce—they broke off a corner of the hot dough, held it in their fingers, and kneaded it like a pellet, using the heel of the hand, smoothing it, making it into a small ball, then flattening it again, working it more with the fingers and palm, savoring it, sharpening their appetite in the delay, bringing it to perfection, breaking it down. The act, like mastication, was done without hurry, using only that one clean hand, continually pressing and squeezing, massaging the lump.

  He had seen Gala eat this way. And this was what Gala was doing now, working her skinny fingers and her hard palm on him. What would have seemed gross and obvious in daylight was, in darkness, a bewitchment. He let her continue, saying nothing, then held his breath, and when the quickening pain of the release was too great, he caught her hand and held it and sighed.

  She was listening, looking away, her head erect, alert. She had stopped humming, though the music still played.

  “What is that?” Her fingers were inquiring on his lap.

  He didn’t want to say, and his deeper silence seemed to animate her. She laughed softly. She tapped and traced the way she did with her fingers on food.

  “Wet,” she said. “Is wet.”

  He clapped his knees together like a startled girl, and placing his damp hand on her much cooler one, he lifted it away.

  “I want to see,” she said, turning to him. She was whispering. “What is it?”

  “You know.”

  “I have never.”

  In the darkness she was not the bright schoolteacher with copybooks under her arm, but an African of wondering bluntness: What ees eet? And Ees wait and I hev nayvah.

  She searched in her carrying basket, and the next thing Hock knew she was laughing, softly waving the beam of her old chrome flashlight around the room and into his eyes and onto his pants. She let out a sound that was not a scream but much worse, a low agonic moan, as if expelling her last breath: a terror of dying where she sat.

  The yellow light had fallen across the room in the crease between the wall and the floor where a puff adder lay like a strange misshapen hose, tensed and swelling, its blunt flat head lifted from the gritty floor, its eyes glinting at them.

  “Don’t move,” Hock whispered. “Keep the flashlight on him.”

  The wide froth-flecked mouth of the snake was slightly parted, spittle coating its narrow lips. Its shadow gave it extra coils, so it seemed a great knotted thing fattening against the far wall.

  “He can’t see us behind the light.”

  But Gala’s shoulders were narrowed in fear, and her hand shook so violently that Hock was afraid she’d drop the flashlight. The flickering beam seemed to disturb the snake. The wedge of its head lifted to sample the air with its darting tongue.

  Taking the pillow from behind Gala on the sofa, Hock hitched forward, and when the rattan squeaked, the snake tensed again. Hock tossed the pillow in front of it, and the snake sprang at it, leaping full length from the last coil of its tail, and striking it, imprinting a clean parenthesis in spittle of its mouth shape on the cloth.

  Gala yelped in terror as Hock snatched the flashlight from her. He kicked the lengthened snake across the room, where it gathered itself again and made for the open door, thrashing back and forth, its mouth still gaping for air.

  “It’s okay,” Hock said. “It wasn’t a big one. And not poisonous, though they bite.”

  “All snakes are poisonous,” Gala said.

  “It’s a puff adder, not deadly. And it’s gone.”

  “I should never have come to this house.” Gala fretted breathlessly, reproaching herself.

  Hock walked her back to her hut, which she shared with another teacher, since it was, like his, a hut provided by the school. Her home was in an adjacent village, nearer the river, where her father had a fishing canoe in a small compound on high ground in the marsh.

  Too upset to speak, she turned away from him at her hut and uttered a formula of words in Sena, which could have been a curse or a prayer.

  Yet it had all excited him. After that, Hock could not think of her visit, and her embrace, without thinking of the snake—the desperate bright-eyed thing coiled in the room all the while they’d spent body-to-body, her hand moving on him.

  He did not mention any of it again. She was oblique with him, but still friendly, more familiar, as though strengthened by the episode. Hock guessed that she was so sure she’d made a mistake, she was confident she’d never do it again, and her resolve made her franker with him.

  One day he said, “I need some help with the report cards.”

  “But I am busy.” She laughed. She would never have said that before.

  It was odd for him to think that he had no power over her, no influence at all; even odder that she giggled at him instead of offering to help. And yet—in her eyes, anyway—hadn’t he saved her from being bitten by a snake?

  A month or more went by before he risked inviting her again. In the meantime, he bought her some ointment at Bhagat’s General Store for a wound on her leg. When she accepted the tube of medicine, he concluded that all was well. He’d asked her to his house. But when she was with her friends, or the other woman teacher, Grace, she mocked him gently or pretended not to hear him, twisted away from him in a dance step that only aroused him more.

  In time, he thought, she’ll give in, she’ll listen. What else was there for her on the Lower River? Her father was a fisherman, her brother helped him mend his nets; only Gala had an education, because she had no practical skills that would be of use on the river.

  Surprising her one day in the classroom after the students had left, he shut the door and leaned against it and said, “I want to talk to you.”

  She said nothing at first, keeping her gaze on the copybooks she was stacking.

  “You can talk,” she finally said, though she didn’t look up.

  “I want to see you.”

  “Aren’t you seeing me now?”

  “In my house.”

  “Sorry. I cannot.”

  “Tell me why.”

  Adding another copybook to the stack, she said, “I am betrothed.”

  “To be married?” He was stunned.

  She said primly, “What else?”

  “Who’s the lucky man?”

  “Mr. Kalonda. I think you are not knowing him. He has an official post at the boma.”

  “Married,” he said, fixing the word on her. “How long have you known him?”

  “For some two years, but he was in discussion with my father about the lobola.”

  The issue was always the dowry, the bride price, never love. Among the Sena it was the man who had to come up with money or a cow to compensate the parents for the loss of their daughter.

  “Do you want to marry him?”

  “A girl must marry,” Gala said. She sighed and slipped the copybooks into her basket. “That way her parents can earn. If she has a man without being married, the parents will not get any money.”

  “Was he your fiancé when you visited me that day?”

  “You tricked me,” Gala said. “And your snake threatened me.” Now she was her mocking self, and seemed even more confident having told him of her betrothal. But he wanted her. Her eyelashes were long and black and glossy, her skinny fingers clutched at the basket, chips of pink on her fingernails, the wound healing on her leg.

  “What will I do without you?”

  She saw that he was t
easing—what else could he do? He was sorrowful, having heard her news. He could not show her his sorrow. Anyway, she seemed to know, but there was nothing to be done.

  “You have your snakes,” she said. She stood up. “Please open the door. I have to go to my home.”

  Hock hesitated, then opened it. But she did not leave. She walked toward him and onto the veranda, where she turned.

  “I like you, Ellis,” she said. “I know you like me. But nothing can happen now. I have a fiancé. If he suspects that I am not true to him, he can refuse me. My parents will get nothing. And they are needing.”

  She did not wait for a reply—he didn’t have one, in any case. She hurried away, and he told himself that in these determined strides, and all this talk of money, she was less desirable. He knew she was unattainable, and still virginal, strong, certain, unsentimental, doing her duty as a daughter and a village girl, following protocol and marrying the civil servant. Her parents would get a cow, and some money. Her whole life lay ahead of her.

  Gala’s rejection of Hock made his leaving easier, and when the message came that his father was ill, he swept away without looking back. Burdened by the family business, he was sure that phase of his life was over, his four years in Africa under the starry sky. But as the years passed, he often thought of Gala on the sofa, her head at the height of the window, the daylight waning, and the fiery sunset giving way to darkness; the whispers in the dark, the radio music, her touch, unmistakable—squeezing the life out of him; and the snake, dazzled in its darkness, frantic, rising to strike.

  In his life as a man it was perhaps the sharpest desire he’d ever felt. Even the memory of it years and years later was capable of arousing him. And what was it? Just a touch, no more, but unforgettable, unrepeatable, magic.

  12

  THE SOURCE OF Hock’s contentment, years ago, had been his trust in their innocence. He had been happy when he had never suspected anyone in Malabo of having a darker motive. Grateful, he’d felt blessed. Now it was a struggle that made his head hurt. Hock was so suspicious of Manyenga and those he influenced that he was wary of announcing his intentions, or so much as speaking casually. The consequences were obvious. If you know what’s in a man’s mind, you have power over him.

  The other side to this was their obliqueness—the villagers in Malabo never said anything that might reveal how they really felt. This trait made them seem mild, but they were deeply suspicious of him now, too, nor were they innocent. And he had come with the best intentions, had handed out money, had shown that he wanted to help. He even picked up a shovel and a slasher and cleared the schoolyard for the restoration of the Malabo school. But in their general glum strangeness they didn’t trust him.

  What does he want? they seemed to think. He saw the question in their guarded smiles, their sidelong looks, their narrowed eyes, the way they floated a suggestion—“We can manage better if we have a new well”—and glanced to see whether he’d bite. He could no longer be truthful; they would mistake the truth for a ruse.

  He didn’t want anything from them, but he knew what they wanted from him. Simple enough: an unending supply of kwacha notes. Because the money was so devalued, the denominations of bills so small, even a modest sum, fifty dollars’ worth, was a whole big bag full of paper. And along with the need for money was the need for him to be a witness to their distress, or so he thought. They seemed to want to prove to him that they were worthy of this charity. Yes, it was a shakedown.

  When he had nothing left, he’d go. But he resisted telling them anything of his plans, and he was sorry he’d shown so much emotion when Manyenga had told him that Gala was alive. Manyenga had uncovered one of his secrets, that he still had a feeling for the woman he’d known so long ago, a memory he had not shared with Deena in the many years of their marriage.

  “You want me to take you to her?” Manyenga said a day or two later, tossing his head. “I can arrange it.”

  He didn’t need to say Gala’s name. He knew what Hock was thinking, and was exploiting it. Hock reminded himself that Manyenga had lived among the aid workers for whom he’d been a driver. He had learned to read the gestures and expressions of Europeans; he knew all about mzungu reactions. He knew when to be silent and when to intervene. It was his mode of survival. Europeans could be obvious when they were anxious. He had been their fixer. Festus, see what those people want—Ask them the price—Find us a place to stay—Get us some food here—Talk to the chief—Meet us with the van—Deliver that message.

  Manyenga had been their man. The relationship had gone wrong in the end, Hock was sure of that, because in his greed and laziness Manyenga had gone too far. Believing he knew them, he became overconfident, incautious, reckless. They had misjudged him, and he hadn’t known when to stop. Even in his dealings with Hock he didn’t realize how obvious he was.

  That was a lesson to Hock, who did not want to be obvious either, who had always hoped he’d be able to slip back into the village, hardly noticed, to pick up where he’d left off.

  So to Manyenga’s presumptuous question he replied, “Take me where?”

  “To the woman—Gala.”

  “No,” Hock said. “It’s not important.”

  That baffled Manyenga. He had a habit of picking his nose when he was especially reflective. He scrunched his face, his thumb in one nostril, and his bafflement gave Hock time to think.

  Hock was not alone. The skinny girl Zizi still brought him hot water in the black kettle for tea in the morning. She carried his laundry away, the bunched pile in her thin arms. Whether she washed the clothes herself he wasn’t sure, but it all came back to him folded, ironed as he instructed, with the clumsy hot-coal iron. It wasn’t the crease that mattered; what was important was that they had been heated. The whole of the Lower River was buzzing with blowflies. These putzi flies laid eggs on damp clothes on the line. Ironing killed the flies’ eggs and the possibility that they’d hatch from the warmth of his wearing the clothes and burrow into his skin, the maggots in his flesh that had become boils he’d suffered in his first year with unironed clothes at Malabo.

  Zizi knelt and swept with the twig broom, she dusted and fussed, and she clucked when she knocked things over. But he loved to see her happy, stretching in the heat, muttering “Pepani!”—Sorry!—as she brushed past him. Although he did not tell her what he wanted, he trusted Zizi. Her large dark eyes and long lashes spoke of innocence, and he could see that she looked to him as a protector. When the bratty boys in the village teased her for being a virgin, she sidled nearer to Hock and the boys were silenced, abashed, because while they were suspicious of his intentions, he knew they feared him, understood that as a stranger he was strong. Zizi knew that he didn’t despise her.

  And Snowdon, with his scabby face and twisted fingers and clumsy feet, he too looked to Hock for protection, since dwarfs were often murdered and their bodies used to make medicine. Snowdon could see that Hock was taken by Zizi—in a way that surprised and embarrassed Hock. He guessed it one late afternoon as Hock sat on his veranda watching Zizi crouching, sweeping the dust and leaves from the courtyard, cleaning it the way Malabo women did, claiming the shady front of the house by tidying the ground. Snowdon toiled over to her on his damaged feet and pinched her shoulder.

  Zizi twisted inside her chitenje wrap, loosening it, then stopped to adjust the cloth, drawing it closer and retying it, edging away from the dwarf.

  “She is beautiful,” Snowdon said in his screechy voice, glancing slyly at Hock. “She is”—and here he twisted his mouth and spoke his one English word—“fee-dee-dom.”

  Another one who had had a clear glimpse of what lay in Hock’s heart.

  Wide-eyed, her lips pressed together as though for balance, breathing anxiously through her nose, Zizi stood, presenting him with a tin bowl of chicken and rice. She was black and slender and emphatic, like an exclamation mark in flesh, upright before him, her wrap slightly slack at her small breasts, standing on large feet, bobbing slightly a
s a clumsy courtesy and a show of respect when she handed over the hot bowl of food.

  Hock loved being barefoot on his wood plank veranda, drinking warm orange squash, sitting in his shorts, eating the tough chicken and sticky rice, peeling a juicy mango, treating himself to one of the last chocolates in his stash, while Zizi watched him from the edge of the veranda, the dwarf gnawed his fingers, and mourning doves moaned in the twisted thorn tree. He felt like an animal then, a happy animal, with food in his paw, his face smeared.

  But he was alone. And on hot afternoons like this it was easy for him to believe he was the only foreigner on the Lower River, the last living mzungu on this hot dusty planet, with his retinue, the skinny girl, the dwarf, and his snakes. He was so content in this role as the last man, he had stopped tuning his radio and ceased to take an interest in the news. He rediscovered what he’d forgotten from before: stop listening to the news, and let two weeks go by; tune in again, and you realize you’ve missed nothing, and so you were cured of the delusion that you needed to stay current. The news didn’t matter, because nothing was news. Nothing mattered. No one was interested in Malabo—this was why the people in the village must have suspected him of having a deeper motive for visiting. He wanted something from them—why else would he come all this way to live in a hut? Altruism was unknown. Forty years of aid and charities and NGOs had taught them that. Only self-interested outsiders trifled with Africa, so Africa punished them for it.

  He was much harder to read than any of the other outsiders because he was alone—there was an implicit boldness in that. He had no context, no vehicle, no way out. He was a stranger, a solitary, and the only way to his heart was to confront him with a skinny girl, like the traveler to whom they would offer a bowl of food or a drink from a green coconut, as though to test him, to see if he was really a man, and also to disarm him, to delay him, to confine him, to obligate him.

  Did Zizi know she was being used? At times he stared at her with an old hunger—he could not help himself. She set the food on the wobbly table and he reached for it and snagged her fingers and held on, tugging a little. He watched her anxious eyes widening, her pressed-together lips, her nostrils opening for air, and it sometimes seemed to him that her ears moved, twitching to hear a danger signal. She stood, her feet together and overlapping slightly, one big toe clamped on the other.