by Paul Theroux
Hock had been carrying his forked stick behind his back. Without stepping nearer, he drew the stick forward and jabbed it in the direction of the snake, rousing it. The snake shortened its muscled body and then, uncoiling, chucked itself at the stick. And before it had time to prepare itself for another rush forward, before it was able to draw its body into another explosive knot, Hock clamped the fork of the stick at the back of its wide head. Now, its head pinned, its body whipped against the sand.
“Take it now.”
Zizi’s mouth gaped, the growly song of fear hovering in her tongue. Her knees were still pressed together.
“Hold it behind its head. Use your fingers to grip it tight.”
“I cannot.”
“Do it for me,” he said.
She removed the basket from atop her head and placed it without a sound on the sand next to her, all the while watching the pinned-down puff adder thrashing its swollen body and pushing at the sand.
“Please,” he said. It was a word he tried to avoid saying in the village, a word of the weak, a word of submission.
Zizi hunched her shoulders and knelt, her wrap slipping farther, both breasts exposed, as she reached and gripped the snake where Hock had indicated. As she took hold of it he lifted the stick, so when she stood she had the snake’s head and gaping jaws above her skinny fist and the whole body of the snake and its tail encircling her forearm.
The song, a jubilant chant, rose from her throat to her mouth and nose, and it pounded against her sweaty face. The snake’s jaws were wide open, not attempting to strike but gasping for air. Zizi’s grip was a stranglehold.
“Easy,” Hock said.
As if hearing him for the first time, Zizi faced him bare-breasted, holding the snake, the foamy, speckled jaws widened at Hock, its fangs dripping mouth-slime.
Hock was slightly alarmed by the change in Zizi—he had not seen this fierce face nor heard this song before. He reached over and took her wrist and, replacing his grip with hers, picked at the snake’s tail, uncoiling its body from her arm, where it had wrapped itself like a tentacle.
“You are strong,” he said.
She surrendered the snake, and as Hock took possession of it, she said, “I am not afraid,” and her face glowed, her eyes glittered, she was breathless. “Not afraid,” she repeated with wonderment, and then was silent, breathing hard, no longer singing.
Back at the hut, they slipped the snake into the basket and fastened the lid. Snowdon saw them and ran to tell the village.
Before going to sleep that night, and the next—because he’d had no word—he followed in his mind Aubrey’s progress to the boma, on the bus, to the Chikwawa Road, and to Blantyre; the young man presenting the envelope at the consulate and, as in a movie sequence, its passing from the receptionist to the secretary upstairs and finally to the vice consul.
“‘Seriously compromised,’” the vice consul would report to the consul. “We’d better send someone down to check on this.” Or the man would go himself, in an official car, Aubrey sitting in the back seat. The matter was urgent; the message was clear.
But even on the third day no one came. No one except Manyenga, who sauntered over, seeming to approach the hut sideways, to see the big snake in the basket, which was news in Malabo. He was impressed, especially when Hock told him that Zizi had caught it; and he was unusually friendly.
“That naartjie is for you,” he said, handing over a tangerine. The Afrikaans word was used by the Sena people, as was takkies, for sneakers. Manyenga often screamed, “Voetsak!” when he was telling an underling to go away. Hock felt that someone must have used the word with him.
Snowdon snatched the tangerine from Hock’s hand and ran off, waving it.
“Cheeky bugger,” Manyenga said, and made a threatening gesture.
“Leave him alone,” Hock said, laughing. He could not help seeing Snowdon as anything but a licensed jester, like the fool in a Shakespeare play.
“You are so kind, father,” Manyenga said. “That is why you are being our minister. You will be a great chief one day!”
“You don’t need me to be a chief.”
“Not true, father. You are our elder. You are so wise. You are always doing the right thing for us.”
Each of these words—kind, wise, minister, elder—was loaded. All such words, Hock saw, had money value, and could be exchanged for hard currency. It seemed that as Manyenga added each word, the final bill was increased. Hock thought of Aubrey saying smartly, “It’ll cost you,” when he asked for the favor. In the past, money had not mattered much. Small debts were settled with a chicken or some dried fish wrapped in banana leaves; big debts might cost a cow. Now, with money, every word and deed had a price.
“You are brave, too,” Manyenga said, tapping the basket after he had had a glimpse of the snake.
“Brave” was worth a handful of kwacha notes, certainly.
“Zizi caught the snake,” Hock said.
And hearing her name, Zizi stared at Manyenga.
“You are making her too proud,” Manyenga said.
There was a word for the handmaiden of a chief, a consort, a junior-wife-to-be, and Manyenga used it now, referring to her as “the small woman.”
Hock said, “She can handle snakes.”
“She can know how to handle anything you ask,” Manyenga said, and tapped his head, pleased with himself in his reply.
The next day—no Aubrey—Manyenga brought a bowl of eggs. He was not alone. Walking behind him was the old man whom he had introduced to Hock after they had arrived back from the Agency depot. Hock could not remember the man’s name, but as he saw him stumbling after Manyenga, led by a small boy, he was reminded that the man was blind.
“For the big man,” Manyenga said, and offered the bowl with both hands.
Eggs were scarce. Why were there so few in a village with so many hens? Only men ate eggs; children were not allowed to touch them. The chickens were not raised systematically; they clucked, and pecked at ants, and laid eggs in the tall grass, in back of huts, in twiggy nests. They were considered a delicacy.
Zizi accepted the bowl of eggs on Hock’s behalf.
Tapping the side of his head again for emphasis, Manyenga said, “But none for her, you understand?”
Another Sena belief associated with eggs was that women were made sterile by eating them.
“Because, as you say, if the girl can handle a snake, she is no longer a girl, but a woman.”
They were seated, Manyenga and Hock, under the tree, in the creaky chairs. The blind man sat on a stool, holding himself upright.
“I think you are knowing what I mean,” Manyenga said.
Snowdon was listening, a gob of drool sliding from the corner of his mouth. Somehow he had gotten hold of an egg. He rolled it back and forth in his stubby hand, like wealth.
Manyenga was still talking in his insinuating way, but all Hock could think about was the nonappearance of Aubrey.
“I remember this man,” Hock said. The old man had a kindly face and an intense expression, his eyes dead behind lids that were not quite closed. He leaned on his walking stick, listening.
“He is Wellington Mwali,” Manyenga said. He took the man’s hand. “This is Mr. Ellis Hock, our friend.”
The old man just smiled, murmuring, because he had not understood.
“He has a story,” Manyenga said.
And this too will cost money, Hock thought. But he said, “I want to hear it.”
Manyenga spoke to the blind man, who hesitated, and smiled again, and then cleared his throat and spoke. He told his story slowly, pausing after every few sentences so that Manyenga could translate. Manyenga spoke with such fluency and feeling it seemed that he was appropriating it as his story.
“You know our black Jesus, the man Mbona, who was killed near here, his head cut off and buried near the boma at Khulubvi?”
“I’ve heard of him. But I was never allowed to go to the shrine.”
“No, no,” Manyen
ga said. “It is a holy place.” The old man went on speaking. He took up the story again. “Mbona is a spirit, but sometimes he spends the night with his wife on earth, the woman we call Salima. This is how the great one visits. He makes sure that Salima is fast asleep, otherwise she would become frightened and run away.”
The old man’s voice dropped to a whisper. Manyenga strained to listen, then spoke again.
“Mbona comes in the form of a python, slipping into the hut beside the mat of Salima. He opens his mouth and licks her body, beginning with her face, so that she believes she is being kissed. All this while he makes the python sound, moaning, and the moans are words, telling her his dreams.”
Still speaking, now as if in counterpoint to Manyenga, the old man turned his blind eyes upward, as in a trance state.
Manyenga said, “After he licks her whole body to calm her, he wakes her. And she sees the huge python. But she is not afraid. She sees that it is her husband, Mbona, and she allows him to coil around her body and lick her everywhere, from her head to her feet, telling her his dreams. Meanwhile, he tells her many things in her dreams. The licking makes her sleep again, and his dreams become her dreams. After he goes, she just wakes up. She knows that her husband had been there, and she has all the important information.”
“About what?” Hock asked.
The old man nodded, hearing the question.
“About the weather. About storms and rains. About planting. And when his visit is at an end, he returns to his place.”
“Where does the python Mbona go?”
“To the pool near the river, which was formed when Mbona’s blood turned into water,” Manyenga said. “Large flocks of doves drink there, which proves that it is a holy place.”
Hock said, “Thanks for the story. Tell the man I said so.”
“We are needing you, father,” Manyenga said. He saw Zizi squatting, brushing flies from his face. “She needs you. She can make you happy.”
The story of the snake encircling the widow and licking her had induced a reverie in Hock, which helped him forget his plight. But as soon as Manyenga stopped translating, he began importuning again, and jarred from his reverie, Hock said abruptly, “How much do you want now?”
“I will tell you in a moment,” Manyenga said. “But first the important information. I must know if you are happy.”
“I am happy. Thanks for bringing this man to me.”
Manyenga leaned closer and licked his lips and said with severity, “And that you will not abandon us again.”
His tone was so serious that Hock said quickly, “Don’t worry.” Then, hearing himself, he added, “Why would I want to leave Malabo?”
“Of course you are safe here,” Manyenga said, too engrossed to hear the irony. “Because we are making you safe.” Before Hock could speak, Manyenga said, “Has anyone harmed you here?”
Hock shook his head, unable to put the sadness he felt into words: the terror of the suspense that had crushed his spirit, the dull ache of fear that was like an illness he’d begun to live with. And everything that Manyenga said had had a price.
“How much?” Hock said.
Only then did Manyenga give him the large number, adding that the old man would need some too. He stood and squared his shoulders and waited for the money to be handed over.
25
LEVELING HIS GAZE and leaning forward to squint across the clearing into the glare and the heat, in the long days he spent waiting for Aubrey to show up—or would it be some sort of response from the consulate?—he thought only of home. The nest-like comfort of it, his clean bedroom and kitchen, the armchair where he had sat, sorting through his visa application and all the paraphernalia of timetables that had led him back here. Medford now seemed as safe, as reassuring, as mute and indestructible as Malabo had once been in his imaginings. Home was solid, not only because he had nothing to fear, but because it could be trusted. Malabo existed in a web of deceits. Manyenga lied, everyone lied, hardly without pretense. They spoke a shadow language of untruth; every word could be translated into a defiant lie.
Home was iced coffee in a tall glass, crisp lettuce on a china plate, a cold bottle of beer, chilled fruit, the snap of a celery stalk, a clear glass of cool water, a ham sandwich with cheese on new-baked bread, fresh sheets, an oak tree’s enveloping shade, his barefoot soles on the polished hardwood floor of his condo, the rattle of white tissue paper in a box of new shirts. The very words. But home was unattainable.
Darkness and cold now seemed to him blessings that sustained life and gave it rest. This heat was like a sickness without a remedy. He went on staring across the clearing, Zizi squatting on his right, Snowdon on his left.
As always, he was muddled in trying to remember what day it was. He guessed that a week had passed since Aubrey had gone, a week of suspense. That meant either that the message had not reached the consulate or that the consulate had shelved it. But surely they would not have ignored such a desperate plea from an American citizen. Hock guessed that Aubrey had taken the money and fled, tossing the message away. So he resolved to give up hoping, and the night of the very day he abandoned hope and tried to think of another plan—he was alone, sitting beside his sooty smoky lantern—a boy in a tattered shirt and torn pants and unlaced sneakers stepped out of the darkness like a cat and knelt and said, “Mzungu.”
“Don’t call me mzungu.”
“Bwerani,” the boy said—come with me—no apology. Perhaps he didn’t speak English.
Hock followed as the boy had asked, leaving the lantern, walking behind the scuffing boy, through the garden, tramping among the furrowed dimbas of pumpkins and corn stalks, so as not to be seen, but traveling in the general direction of the road beyond the village. It was the road that led to Gala’s hut, but they were walking in the opposite direction.
Ever since arriving in Malabo, he had been dictated to by the young and the ragged and the insolent. And here I am again, he thought, a big fool, fumbling after a boy on a moonlit path. The seat of the boy’s trousers was torn, exposing the muffin of one skinny buttock.
“Come,” the boy said again in his language.
Overwhelmed with helplessness, and without any faith, Hock had simply stopped in the cornfield. Hearing that the sounds of brushed and trampled corn stalks had ceased, the boy had turned and seen Hock, his hands on his hips, standing in the field, sighing.
“What’s the point?” Hock said, not caring that the boy didn’t understand. But when he sighed again and made a move to return home, the boy spoke again.
“Aubrey,” he said, but in three syllables, pronouncing it to rhyme with “robbery.”
“Where is he?” Hock asked in Sena.
“He has a vehicle,” the boy said in Sena. But the word garimoto could mean anything with a motor—a car, a bus, a tractor.
Doubting, stepping slowly, he obeyed the boy, and past a row of trees, in the frosty glow of the moon, he saw a van parked at the entrance to a path just off the side road.
Even if the night had been moonless he would have seen the van, a model known as a combi, because it gleamed white, and on a side panel, inside a gold shield, was the large double-A of L’Agence Anonyme. The whole name was picked out on the rear doors. It was the only four-wheeled vehicle Hock had so far seen at Malabo—a novelty, of improbable size, and seemingly new: no dents, perhaps polished, like the powerful instrument of a dramatic rescue.
Inside, one small red light burned, went dim, and brightened again, and on closer inspection Hock could see it was a cigarette that Aubrey was puffing in the front seat.
Seeing Hock, he said, “Get in—hurry up.”
The ragged boy who’d led him there stepped beside Hock and pushed at him.
“You give money,” he said, his first words in English.
Hock nudged him aside and spoke to Aubrey: “We’re going now?”
“Yes, yes. Come inside. We go.”
The dimness of the pale moonlight exaggerated the shadows on Au
brey’s face, making it skull-like, bonier, more like a mask. The glow on his dark skin and the streaky froth of his sweat on the creases of his neck were greenish.
“I can’t leave everything behind.” He was thinking of Zizi.
“You have your money?”
Hock had all his money—always had it, because he had ceased to trust—and with it his passport and wallet in a pouch in his fanny pack, the only safe place.
“Some money. Not all,” he said, though they probably knew he was lying.
His clothes, some papers, his knife, his stick, his shaving kit, his medicine, his duffel. The snake in the basket. He could leave all of it. But Zizi: once again she was unaware she was being abandoned. Nothing he owned mattered when he realized his life was at stake, and as for Zizi—he’d do something, send her money through Gala, get her to safety, away from the dead end of Malabo.
The ragged boy had pressed himself against Hock’s legs, pleading for money. Hock pushed him, and then, in a twitch of superstition, he handed over the Bic lighter he found in his pocket.
“No,” the boy objected, and gestured with it, as though to hand it back.
But by then Hock was in the van, in the sudden comfort of a seat with springs, a cushion, a handle he grasped to steady himself. He was momentarily reassured. Aubrey started the engine, slipped the gearshift down, and, rocking the van across some ruts, jounced onto the road.
“Put on your headlights,” Hock said.
“No lights.”
“You’ll drive into the creek.”
“Lights are bad. The others will see us.”
Aubrey drew his lips back, as if it was an effort to speak. His teeth were long, exposed almost to their roots, the gums shrunken—another revelation of the moonlight. He was nervous and sounded weary, and perhaps it was also the slow bumping progress of the vehicle in the moon-frosted darkness that made it seem that he was driving badly.
Without warning, Aubrey threw his skinny shoulders at the steering wheel and pulled the van to the side of the road. He cut the engine and rolled down his side window and listened.
