The Lower River

by Paul Theroux

  She slipped away, and before the man had finished the wrist, Zizi was beside him, her head lowered.

  “Snake doctor,” she said in her language.

  Without thinking, Hock groaned—too loud—and the little man in the fur hat drew back, his face upturned, scowling at the window. Startled by the sight of the mzungu and the turbaned girl, he made a scouring sound in his toothless open mouth, a harsh cat-like hiss.

  At dusk the next day, framed by a volcanic sunset, Manyenga visited Hock at his hut to announce that he had been seen with Zizi at the clinic. And why?

  Hock said, “I thought he was a doctor. I needed some aspirin.”

  “I enjoy your sense of humor, father! Sure, he is a doctor. Better than a European doctor. After he does his work, a person is protected for life.”

  “Protected from what?”

  “From the bite of a snake,” Manyenga said, and he raised his fists to his face so that Hock could see the old raised scars that circled his wrists. “You see, we are not fearing you!”

  A thud like that of a woman bopping her pestle into a mortar woke him in the darkness one night some days later, pulsing under his hut, the very soil jarred by its steady beat. He felt the thud in his body, prodding him, and was then wide awake. He walked to the window and the thudding entered his feet. Seeing nothing, he went to the door and as always was amazed by the crystalline brightness of the stars, some blobby, some pinpricks, their milky light shimmering on the leaves of the trees, the starry glow on the bare ground coating it with fluorescence.

  Still the thudding, a sickening repetition, pushing at him. And then he saw the fire jumping at the edge of the village, in the football field where the orphan boys sometimes kicked a ball between two overturned buckets that represented a goal mouth.

  As soon as he stepped away from his hut, Hock became self-conscious in the bluish light of the stars. He looked for Zizi. But she seldom slept near his hut. She seemed to drift off after he’d gone to bed, showing up in the early morning, probably at a signal from Snowdon, who crept to the veranda before dawn.

  Yet Hock was not alone. The football field glowed yellow in the firelight. The ta-dum ta-dum of the drum being slapped, the plink-plink of the plucked finger harp like the shrill notes of a xylophone made of glass, and the far-off yodeling of women mingled with the growls of men. It seemed the whole village was awake.

  Had he been a first-timer on a bush walk, down here to look at hippos in the river or to go bird watching in the marsh, he might have seen this as a colorful nighttime get-together. He smiled briefly, the naïve thought of a party crossing his mind, and then he went grim again, picking his way to the fat baobab stump forty yards from his hut. He crouched at the stump. He knew what he was watching, and it was not a party.

  In his day, this ceremony had been performed outside the village as an expression of the secret society of men, directed by the chief. It was so hidden that he’d only heard the drumming those nights and seen the exhausted faces the following morning. He’d inquired and been told it was “the Big Dance,” the Nyau or image dance—maybe a wedding, or a funeral, or an ujeni (“whatsit”), they said, meaning something forbidden or not to be spoken about to a mzungu, or an outsider, or an uninitiated girl.

  He knew what he was hearing, and he could see the dancers gathering and stamping their feet in time to the drums and the tinkling finger harp, now tripping faster, plinka-plinka-plinka. He knelt and held on to the stump for balance and to ease the weight on his knees. He’d sometimes see a snake here at the stump, a puff adder that swelled to the thickness of his wrist, but snakes didn’t stir at night.

  He was more concerned by the crowd gathering around the leaping fire, the sharp gunshot crack of the burning branches, the sparks flying up in clusters—some carried into the sky, borne by the uprush of heat and flames. He had never overcome his fear of an African crowd, how it might grow from a handful of people to a restless sweaty mob. He’d seen such mobs at political rallies in his first years, the crazy mass of yelling men and yodeling women. Once, on the bus to Chikwawa, he’d witnessed a group of men at a roadblock. Laughing with a superior-sounding anger, they boarded the bus and used thick clubs to beat the Sena men who were not wearing the party badge that showed the president’s face. He’d seen one man, begging for his life, kicked and trampled into silence.

  The Big Dance, for all its apparent order, was no less menacingly mob-like. It seemed that every man and boy in Malabo was on the field. The women were audible in their ululation, but they were distant, unseen, nearer the huts. Even the orphan boys, in their rags and shaggy hair and torn T-shirts, were stamping to the drumbeat.

  Yet just as all those men, sweaty in the firelight, seemed on the verge of rushing apart in a frenzy of aimless rage, a figure appeared before them—Manyenga, like a hectoring choirmaster. He was chanting a word, unintelligible to Hock, and the rest of the crowd took it up as a cry. As they repeated it, they seemed more unified and solemn.

  Manyenga took his place on a chair at the edge of the stamping, chanting men, and a masked figure danced before them. The mask was not made of carved wood—the Sena seldom carved; they made wide dugout canoes and shovel-like paddles and sometimes house idols of wood, but not masks. For ceremonies they wove bamboo strips into a frame and covered it with bark and leaves, and that was their conception of a mask, a fluttering headdress of dead leaves.

  This was just such a mask—twisted together and ragged, not a face but a deliberate fixture. Knotted to it were scraps of pale cloth and plastic, the flimsy rippings of a white garbage bag, a large swollen beast’s head with a gaping mouth. Hock could see the face of the dancer staring wildly out of the mask’s mouth.

  Another dancer met this masked figure in the center of the dance area, brightly lit by the bonfire. This second, opposing figure was cloaked in a dark cape, and instead of a mask its head had been entirely wrapped in a ragged cloth, like a monster with a filthy bandage around its head.

  The masks were the more hideous for being so crude. The wooden or dead-leaf masks Hock had been shown by Sena elders in the past had an aesthetic appeal, were well made and symmetrical. But these masks, one of shredded plastic, the other of rags, frightened him with their coarse construction, as though they’d been twisted together by angry men in a hurry, using the castoff scraps from a trash heap. They were clumsy, insulting, grotesque, and terrifying for being so badly made.

  Snowdon grinned in the light of the fire, delighting in the noise and flames, as the two figures sparred in a mock struggle, the tall man in the ragged mask of white plastic, and the squirming figure in the cloak and faceless wrapped head. They were also dancing, obeying the rhythm thumped out on the drums.

  After less than a minute of this, Snowdon waved a red object at the dancers, and seeing it they faltered, hesitated, disengaged. The dwarf was too small to do much more than gesture with the red object. At the urging of Manyenga, still in his armchair, a bystander took the thing from Snowdon and placed it on the head of the white-masked figure.

  Hock recognized it as his own, the red baseball cap he sometimes wore. But if that was meant to be him, the white-masked mzungu figure in the baseball cap, who was that other cloaked, contending figure with its head wrapped in rags? When the dancers resumed, stamping in a circle, it occurred to him that the second figure had no arms and merely swayed, and he took it to represent a snake.

  The snake seemed to be getting the better of the Hock figure, backing him up, making him dance in retreat, shuffling and leaning forward like a mamba intending to strike.

  He was sure of this when he heard the word njoka—snake! —shrieked by some of the boys, and the drawn-out ’zoongoo mooed by the men. The snake advanced to the plinking of the finger harp. The white-masked figure retreated to the sound of drumbeats and then skipped past the snake, confronting it. The movement was too crude to be balletic, yet there were elements of subtler dance steps, as though with some refinements this could be staged as a drama—the s
truggle of two masked figures in the firelight, to the counterpoint of drum thumps and finger pluckings.

  He was fascinated and appalled to see this battling creature with the horrible face in the ridiculous headdress fending off the snake. The snake Hock took to be sexual, though he knew he was noted for his fearlessness as a snake handler. The bystanders cheered the thrusting body of the snake, the evasions of the masked man.

  Is that how I seem to them? Hock wondered—a cringing figure with a beaky nose and peeling skin, dancing away from the confrontation? Each time the snake pretended to strike, driving the mzungu figure backward, a cheer went up, the drums grew more insistent, and the mzungu spun around. But the snake had the advantage, moving smoothly, its whole head a ragged bandage; the mzungu stumbled on two uncoordinated feet.

  And what did it mean when the snake twisted aside and a boy dressed as a girl—a rouged face and smeared lips, a tattered yellow dress—approached and these two caricatures began to dance as a pair, as the mzungu figure twitched behind them? Had they been clowning, Hock might have been reassured. But it was late, the fire was hot, the drums were loud, the plinking of the finger harp pierced his heart. This was not clowning.

  All this talent, all this energy at night, from those who were so sleepy in the daytime. The spectators, men and boys, were emboldened by the music, perhaps, excited by the towering fire. Faces gleaming with sweat, golden-skinned in the light of the flames, they reached toward the dancing figures, shuffled forward, crowding them.

  The boy in the yellow dress taunted both the masked figures. He was not masked, though he was luridly painted, his features exaggerated with the greasy makeup.

  The sight triggered a memory. In his first year in the Lower River, just after the school at Malabo had been finished, Hock had gone back to school late after lunch. He’d been disturbed by a letter from home, a clingy letter that had made him furious. As he’d approached the classroom, he heard an unfamiliar voice, and laughter. He paused before entering, sidling up to the door, and saw one of the boys pacing at his desk and muttering in an imitation of him. A cruelly accurate imitation, approximating his stammering um-um-um in an explanation, his nodding head, his way of pacing, turned-in toes, knees lifted. And he’d been abashed. So as not to embarrass himself further, he made an announcing noise, waited for the scuffling to diminish, and entered the classroom to see that some students were solemn, some tittering. When he tried to resume the lesson, he found he did not have the heart to continue. Instead, he assigned them an essay topic and gave them the hour to complete it. Afterward he fled to his house and the letter from his father.

  That was how he felt now, at the sight of a man in a mask that was meant to represent his face, a snake that he took to be an adversary, and a boy in a ragged dress, which baffled him.

  Never mind what it meant to them. It horrified him in a way that was more alarming for being meaningless. His face reflected in a mirror had always disturbed him. As the subject of a Nyau dance he believed he was being ridiculed, and he remembered Gala’s warning. As for the boy he’d found mimicking him in the classroom, he’d never trusted him after that.

  The drumming became a thunderous pounding of hand slaps. He backed away from the baobab stump, into the shadows, and withdrew to his hut.

  15

  HARDLY SEVEN, AND the morning sun slanting through the twiggy trees had filled the clearing at Malabo with stifling humidity, like an invisible smothering presence that bulked against his face, leaving his neck clammy and his body weak. The earth itself was baked dry and crisscrossed with paths pounded smooth by bare feet. The foliage of the mopane trees faded to yellow, the thorn acacias coated with dust.

  Squinting into the distance, because a dog had begun an irritable bark, Hock saw a shimmering spectral blob in the heat, coming closer, resolving itself into two figures, large and small, Manyenga and a skinny burdened girl hurrying behind him.

  “Morning, chief,” Hock said.

  “But, eh, you are being a big man as well, father,” Manyenga said.

  And he smiled seeing Hock sitting as usual at his table on the narrow veranda, Zizi squatting on her heels near him, the dwarf crouching a little distance away by a low bush, gnawing his fingers.

  The way Manyenga stared put Hock on his guard. The anxiety, the calculation, something approaching fear, that he’d noticed in the young man on his arrival was gone. Now Manyenga gazed directly at him, looked him up and down, narrowing his eyes, without any hesitation. He was at ease, friendlier, more familiar, and less reliable.

  Hock saw himself with Manyenga’s eyes, an old mzungu, attended by a skinny girl and a dwarf, a portrait of inaction, like a ruined chief on a rickety throne. He’d stopped shaving, his clothes were stained. The tableau somehow illustrated his life at Malabo—not at all what he had imagined, but tolerable because nothing was expected of him beyond greeting the villagers, and not complaining, and giving them money now and then. There was no point. He had to leave, to get away, if only to Blantyre, to collect his thoughts and decide his next move.

  “You were seeing us at the dance,” Manyenga said, gesturing to the girl to set down the plate of porridge and the mug of milky tea.

  “How do you know?”

  It was a breach of etiquette for an outsider to observe the Nyau dance. In spite of himself, Hock could not be indignant at being questioned. He was abashed, as though he’d seen someone naked in the village; he’d had no right.

  But Manyenga was nodding with a slyly satisfied face—a smile that was not a smile. “We were celebrating you,” he said. “We were thanking you, father. And you were there.”

  Hock said in Sena, “A ghost doesn’t miss a funeral”—a proverb he’d learned long ago, one he’d often quoted in Medford.

  “You are knowing so much, father.”

  “But I have to leave today,” Hock said, and took another breath, because his chest was tight—the heat, the scrutiny of the strong younger man. “To go to Blantyre.”

  All night he had been pondering this possibility, even practicing the form of words. Nothing had gone right. He knew he had been cheated out of the money for the roofing, he was being overcharged for room and board, the school would stay a ruin. The boys had abandoned him—but they were orphans, there was little hope for them. No, perhaps they were counting on him, but if so, it was all hopeless. His waiting to be fed, breathless in the morning heat, drawing shallow breaths, his face glowing with sweat so early in the morning, had shown him the futility of it all.

  “I’ll need a lift to the boma.” His idea was to find the departure times of the buses to Blantyre, perhaps catch one that day, just to be away.

  “As you are wishing, father,” Manyenga said, with another nod and that ambiguous half-smile. “But you were watching our dance without permission. That is a trespassing. According to custom you must pay a fine.”

  “I understand.”

  “A heavy fine. Sorry, father.”

  “In that case, I need to get some money from the bank. I’m almost out of cash.”

  Instead of looking greedy and grateful, Manyenga frowned, seeming bewildered, but he lifted his hands in an accommodating gesture, as if to say, Anything for you. Then he clicked his tongue at the serving girl.

  “Bon appétit,” he said.

  And again Hock remembered that the man had been a driver for a foreign agency.

  “The boma is far. We must leave soon,” Manyenga said.

  Hock was encouraged when the man kept his word. They left on the motorbike later in the morning, Manyenga driving. Hock, sitting behind him, had his passport and all his important papers. Revving the engine with twists of his hand, Manyenga told him to hold on, and he skidded away. But not fifty yards into the journey, even before they reached the road, Manyenga swerved and screamed, “Njoka!”

  Hock twisted around, looking for the snake, and lost his balance and fell, bruising his side. Winded, he lay in the dust, wondering if he had broken any ribs.

  �
��We cannot go,” Manyenga said, righting the motorbike, helping Hock up from the ground.

  Manyenga’s brow was heavy, his face dark with fear. Hock knew of the prohibition against traveling onward after a snake has crossed your path. Manyenga’s mood had changed from agreeable to anxious. He seemed tense, nearly angry.

  “I didn’t see a snake,” Hock said.

  “It was so big! A green mamba—they match the leaves,” Manyenga said. “We must obey.”

  Hock was too bruised to argue, yet annoyed that the man was describing a snake to him that he had not seen. He limped back in the sun to his hut, and there he sat, wondering how to overcome this man. He suspected it was a ruse. Yet he was hurt. And realizing that he’d been forced to lie to Manyenga to get to the boma made him uneasy. The lie indicated that he was afraid to tell the truth—that he simply wanted to go to Blantyre and plot his next move, to go home.

  He went to his duffel bag and felt for his pouch of money. He found the fat envelopes and saw that some money was missing, and he laughed, mocking his own stupidity. That was why Manyenga had reacted that way. He knew that Hock was not going to the bank for money. Manyenga knew he had money, that he was lying.

  Hock looked up and saw the dwarf staring at him with red-rimmed eyes, a wet finger in his mouth.

  Aching after the fall from the bike, he rested. The following night the Nyau was danced again. Hock’s head throbbed. The very sound of the drums echoed in his skull, pained him physically, pounded inside him. He had a fever—he knew malaria, the flu-like symptoms, the headache. He found his bottle of chloroquine and, unable to locate his water jug, chewed three tablets and lay in his string bed, the drums beating against his eyes and ears, his sore body, his sore head. The mosquito net killed any movement of air and trapped the heat.

  Then days and nights were one. He did not know how long he lay shivering with chills, gasping in the heat, his heart fluttering, his head like an echo chamber. He heard a wild commotion, screeching, insistent drumming, the ululating of frenzied women. His eyes seemed scorched, and his skin felt raw against the sheets. The slightest brush of the mosquito net caused him discomfort. It was not like skin at all, but like tissue that was easily torn.