by Paul Theroux
The boy he had spoken to was now standing in front of the seated children from the village, his back to the field. He seemed to be leading the children in prayer, or at least eliciting responses, the big boy reciting a line, the children repeating it. A prayer, a promise, a war chant, a threat, a lament—it could have been anything.
The children at the far side of the field simply watched, and the ones who had just arrived were settling into postures of waiting. Dressed the same, in old American T-shirts and ragged shorts and trousers—facing the empty field—all the children looked like members of a cargo cult.
Their patience was like indifference, like a form of despair, not anticipation of an event but hopelessness. When the children on Hock’s side of the field were finished chanting they lapsed into silence, blinking at the flies that were settling around their eyes. None of them sat near Hock. Because of the snake, they kept away from him.
Then the snake’s body contracted on his arm, its throat swelling again, and this made Hock more watchful, as though by its flicking tongue it had smelled a rising emotion in the children. Certainly the children were more tense, seeming to contract themselves, resolving themselves into more compact postures of listening. The snake too seemed hyperalert, its muscles pulsing and pinching against Hock’s hot arm.
Nothing was in the sky, and yet a far-off sound, a yak-yak-yak, became audible and grew louder, until, like a giant insect, a helicopter burst from the dusty haze and hovered over the field, high up.
So this was the bird. The helicopter was blue and white, with a logo, a shield in gold on its side, and under it the words L’Agence Anonyme. And it was growing larger. What had seemed a small bulbous chopper, flying in and circling, grew as it descended, became elongated, and the updraft of its whirling rotor blades sucked a dense column of dust from the ground that became a wide brown cloud.
Even before it landed, while it was settling lower, the double doors on its side slid open, revealing its interior. Then two things happened, surprising things. First, music began to play—rock music, very loud, a pounding rhythm, yada-boom, yada-boom, yada-boom. And then, while it played, growing even louder, a group of people appeared at the opening. The two in front, flanked by Africans, were a white man in a cowboy hat and a woman in high boots—a blonde, chalky-faced, in a black skintight suit. Both of them were gesturing to the children, looking jubilant.
Yada-boom, yada-boom—where were the loudspeakers?
The children, most of them, kept their places at the edge of the field, though a handful of excited, much younger ones ran into the thickening dust cloud, staggering, seeming to choke, many of them retreating as the helicopter came to rest, its long skids sinking into the rough grass and loose dirt of the field. The two white people standing in the cabin hatchway waved, still jubilant. Just behind them was an imposing-looking African man in a spotless safari suit, taller than the white man and woman; from his assertive gestures he seemed to be issuing orders.
Before the children sitting and kneeling at the margin of the field stood up, preparing to run to the helicopter, the boy in the black Dynamo cap appeared next to Hock and said, “Tell the Agency to help us.” He held his body away, his arms behind his back, his head to the side, as though he expected the snake to uncoil itself and strike him.
Hock said, “Help me get near—keep the children away,” and he snatched up his bag and headed toward the helicopter, which had become a blur in the rising dust cloud.
Hock saw his chance to save himself, to get close enough to appeal for help. He was sure he was visible from the helicopter—how hard was it to pick out a tall white man in a bush shirt and tattered trousers, a bag in one hand, a fat snake wrapped around his right arm, which he held forward like a weapon?
The boy in the baseball cap pushed ahead of him, elbowing his way through the mass of children. Now that the rotor blades had stopped and the engine was silenced, only the music played—thumping joyous music—and the children who had been hanging back rushed toward the chopper, into the risen dust, making more dust, crowding Hock and nearly knocking him down.
“Over here!” he called to the man and woman in the open doorway. How clean they looked, how outlandish in their dress, the man in the cowboy hat and boots, the blond woman in her skintight suit. “Help me!”
They began tossing boxes and bags to the children who were nearest to them. At first they handed them over, but within seconds the children were fighting over them, and the man in the cowboy hat became frantic, flinging the bags, kicking the boxes out of the helicopter door, as though to distract the frenzied children.
The children, maddened by the sight of the bags, tore at each other.
“Please—help me,” Hock cried out, waving his bag. He relaxed his other arm, and the children near him, reaching for the bags, jostled his arm, bumping the snake. Feeling its coils loosen—the snake was blinded by the dust—Hock let go of its head and allowed it to drop into the dust. The snake’s whipping back and forth on the ground panicked a small knot of children, who kicked at it and stamped on it, crushing its head.
Even pushing as hard as he could, Hock made little progress against the small bodies so tightly packed ahead of him. Some children nearer the helicopter had begun to climb aboard, bracing themselves on the skids and clinging to the struts, attempting to crawl through the legs of the man and woman at the door.
Hock was shouting but could not hear his voice over the loud yada-boom, yada-boom. Tripped by the small battering bodies, he fell to his knees among the struggling children with dust on their sweat-smeared faces. Now kneeling, he was the height of a child himself.
He could see the man and woman clearly: the man’s expensive sunglasses and clean cowboy hat, the woman’s red lips, gleaming makeup, and unusually white teeth. Another man stood beside them with a video camera, shooting them, shooting out the door. Now the man in the cowboy hat was kicking at the children, fending them off with bags of food, and the woman was trying to keep her balance. She was open-mouthed, perhaps shrieking in fear, but all Hock could hear was the yada-boom. She looked clownish, costumed, like the man, dressed as though for a party or a concert, in great contrast to the mass of small children in dirty T-shirts, clawing at one another.
All this time the music played, energetic pumping rhythms that drowned out the children’s shouts and the woman’s shriek and the voices of the men at the helicopter door who seemed to be yelling at each other. No voices were audible, but the open mouths and wild eyes made it a scene of pure panic in the growing dust cloud.
Still trying to make himself heard, Hock got to his feet and fought on, stepping over the children, pushing others aside. His effort had the absurd indignity of a dream, all irrational and unreal, and what made it more dream-like was his slowness, his pathetic helplessness, and that he was ignored, humiliated, unable to call attention to himself.
The man in the cowboy hat met Hock’s eyes and lifted his sunglasses to verify with his own surprised gaze the sight of this frantic white man. He seemed to lean over, as though what he was seeing was not quite believable. He said something to the man behind him. But he had a pale debauched face, and there was no sympathy in the set of his jaw, and when he let his sunglasses slip down over his eyes and turned to throw more bags from the helicopter, at the same time kicking out at the climbing children, Hock flung himself forward.
“Help!” Hock screamed. He felt the strain in his throat without hearing the word, because now the music was overwhelmed by the roar of the engine, the chatter of the rotor blades as they began to turn. Turning faster, they stirred more dust, and the dust engulfed the children and the field while Hock hugged his bag to his chest. Two children dropped from the skids where they had been hanging. Yak-yak-yak-yak-yak, the helicopter rose into the sun, which cast an eerie glow through the dust; it was like a beetle swallowed by a storm cloud.
The rotor’s yakking diminished, the music grew softer, and the yelps of the children grew louder as they fought over the bag
s and boxes strewn on the ground. Seeing that they were occupied in this free-for-all, Hock turned to go, intending to run away from the choking dust, to the margin of the field, to take his chances in the bush.
But just as he turned, he saw, emerging from the trees, fifteen or twenty motorcycles rushing toward the center of the field like a pack of one-eyed animals. Side by side, the motorcycles converged as they came closer, heading into the mass of children.
Half an hour before, Hock had been sitting cross-legged in the shade of the tall grass and shrubs at the edge of the field, the snake coiled on his arm, feeling powerful. Then the confusion—the helicopter, the loud music, the strangers at the door, the dumped boxes and bags of food, the crazed children, his own desperation. The swelling uprush of dust had slowed him, and the eruption of children quarreling over the bags and boxes, tearing them to pieces, had shocked him. The helicopter taking off had made more dust, but no sooner had its noisy rotors disappeared than the blatting of the motorcycles began.
He was in danger of being trapped by the motorcycles. Some of them were knocking children down as the riders snatched at the bags, stacking them on their handlebars, shoving the children out of the way, chasing children who were tottering with bags in their arms. He dodged a skidding bike and headed toward the emptier part of the field, and on the way managed to pick up a bag, a bulging cloth sack of what he imagined to be rice or flour or millet.
He could not run. After sprinting a few steps, he stopped, gasped for breath, then walked, his face grimy from the sweat-smeared dirt, still breathing hard in the dust cloud that hung over the field.
He half turned to see how far he had come when the boys, flailing their arms, rushed at him, shouting. Resisting, Hock felt old and feeble, unable to repel them, and afraid of the very sight of them, their angry faces, their bared teeth. One of the reaching boys grabbed at Hock’s sack of flour, another boy clung to his arm—the arm where the snake had been coiled.
“Wait—wait,” Hock said, trying to calm them, because he knew he lacked the strength to fight them off. “What do you want?”
They were two of the bigger boys from the village of children, the boys who had led him here, knowing in advance that a helicopter was going to arrive, carrying—who? celebrities? politicians?—to distribute food. One of them was the boy who had woken him that morning with the words “The bud.”
“Wait—you not go.”
“Let go of my arm,” Hock said, hating the boy’s dirty hand on him, his bony grip. “Take the bag of food—you can have it.”
“We want you,” the bigger boy said.
In spite of the long trek here, and the struggle in the field, and the confused chase, these boys were still wearing sunglasses, and one of them the black baseball hat he’d had on in the village.
“I have to go home now,” Hock said, and absurdly, with a screeching insistence and pompous formality, “Don’t you understand? I have appointments! I have issues to settle.”
“There is no need,” the boy said, holding on.
Now the other boy was clutching Hock’s shirt, his fingers hooked in the strap of Hock’s duffel bag. Although neither boy was as tall or as heavy as Hock, they hung on, dragging him back. The dust, dense and flecked with dirty sunlight, and the loud complaints and whines of the squabbling children in the middle of the field, made it all worse: the children’s protests, the braying of the motorcycles. Hock was weakened, unnerved by the shrieking, the heat, and now unable to speak, grit in his mouth, gagging on the dirty air.
Hock was pushed hard as the boy next to him was thumped aside, and in the same moment a motorcycle roared. The other boy let go of his arm and stumbled away.
“Get on, father,” the rider called out impatiently, then louder, “Get on!”
Hock swung his leg over and took hold of the man, who sped into the crowd. It was a full minute before he saw it was Manyenga, who seemed to laugh, but no, just teeth and lips set in an expression of fury, screaming for the children to back off.
20
THE MOTORCYCLE PASSED through the low wall of yellowing shrubs and parched trees on a path that was a groove hardly wider than its fat tires, but wide enough. There were no roads here, as the exultant boy had said in the children’s village, yet the stony crusted floor of this sun-heated bush was crisscrossed with tire tracks. And Hock was cooler on the speeding bike, the breeze in his face. He held on as Manyenga’s elbows slapped at the slender tree limbs and grubby leaves. He was grateful to be delivered from the chaos on the field and glad that he was with someone he knew, feeling like an impulsive runaway who’d been rescued from his foolishness by the intervention of an adult: saved. But as he sat on the motorcycle, which was rocking like a hobbyhorse on the straighter stretches and skidding on the sandy turns, this feeling of deliverance ebbed, and as his strength returned he was filled with apprehension: caught again.
His relief at being rescued turned to misery as he acknowledged that he had not been saved but snared, and by the very man he’d tried to escape from. Still, he hung on, and the awfulness of his situation did not hit him fully until they were well away from the children, who now seemed to him so skinny as to be half alive, desperate, improvisational, and reckless, living by their wits.
Manyenga meanwhile appeared to realize that he had traveled a safe enough distance and was not being followed. He slowed down, and seeing a baobab tree ahead, he stopped the bike under it and both men dismounted. Manyenga’s sweat of exertion hit him: he stank like a wet dog.
The bark of the baobab was torn, the white flesh of the wood exposed and splintered.
“Elephants like to eat this tree for its juicy wood. It has water!” Manyenga said, and he laughed. “They can destroy it!”
“There are elephants here?”
“Why not? This is bush, indeed!” Manyenga was friendly, oblique, teasing. Then he said, “What are you doing, playing with those silly children, isn’t it?”
“They gave me food,” Hock said.
“What food? They have nothing to eat, only what the ndege from the Agency brings them.”
“And you steal it from them.”
“We are hungry too.”
“They have cassava and bananas.”
“Rubbish food, famine food. Where are their chickens? They have no gardens. Are they making relish or stew? Not at all!”
“I was here only a few days,” Hock said, not knowing where this conversation was leading. He didn’t want to admit that he’d been trapped by the children.
Manyenga said, “You prefer to live there with those children, isn’t it?”
“I was just passing through.”
“I must inform you that one German mzungu on the river was captured by them and after some few weeks in captivity they sold him for money. They absconded with his money and food. I know these children. They make trouble on the river. That is why . . .”
Instead of saying more he sighed—whinnied—shook a cigarette from a pack, and lit it. He pursed his lips and directed a plume of smoke into the air. He looked around and laughed, as though at the strangeness of his being there, under the tree with Hock. He had Hock’s full attention now.
“That is why, my friend, the paddle boys and Simon left you at Megaza frontier station. They knew that if you were with them, the bad children would try to overturn their canoe and catch you.”
“How do you know that?”
“The paddlers dropped Simon at Caya on the Zambezi. They came back yesterday. And I was told.”
“So you went looking for me.”
“Not at all! I was with my friends, following the ndege. When it flies, we chase it—for goods! But God sent me to you. I knew you must be with the children, or maybe dead.”
“You know everything,” Hock said, testing him.
Manyenga squirted smoke through the gaps in his teeth, hissing, and said, “You should thank me, father.”
“Thank you,” Hock said.
“Because I saved your life, isn
’t it?”
Hock wondered if this was so, and suspected it might be, but he wanted to deny the gloating Manyenga the satisfaction of it. He said, “They were afraid of me.”
Manyenga laughed, wagging his tongue, and then, his laughter faltering and growing harsh, he began to cough and, coughing, fighting for breath, stamped on the ground, raising dust.
In a choked voice he said, “They are afraid of nothing, my friend,” and to emphasize this he flicked his hand sharply, whipping his fingers together, making them snap. “That mzungu they sold, that German, was tough. But where is he now? Those children are devils. Maybe they took your things, too.”
Hock said nothing. Manyenga was studying him, the cigarette in his mouth giving him a look of insolence.
“What things?” Hock said at last.
“Maybe money.”
“Let’s go,” Hock said. “Where’s the road?”
Whenever he saw that he could contradict Hock, Manyenga put on a smug expression and became theatrical, hamming the moment, pausing before he delivered his putdown. Hock was not annoyed; it gave him hope when he saw that Manyenga was predictable.
“This is the country of no roads. No vehicles. Nothing. Only” —he indicated the wheel tracks, flourishing his cigarette—“paths for footing only. Or for motorbikes.”
“How far is the village—Malabo?”
“Too far.” Manyenga tossed the cigarette butt away. He mounted the bike and leaned and kicked the start lever. The engine gagged, gargled in complaint, then began rapping.
“Where are we going?”
Manyenga said, “You will see,” and when Hock hesitated, Manyenga’s face lost all its teasing mirth and became a mask sweating with impatience. “Do you want me to leave you here?”
Hock allowed himself to be scolded. He sulked as he got on the bike, moving slowly out of pride, like a child who’d been reprimanded. He thought: That’s how it is—I’ve been reduced to that, or less than a child, because even the children in the village were stronger than me. And now Manyenga had taken charge of him and was telling him what to do. He had no choice but to obey. He was lost here, disoriented by the river trip and the spell in the village and the hike to the open field. The appearance of the helicopter had been like a hideous dream of mockery. And now the motorcycle ride and the hostile You will see.
