by Paul Theroux
Father spooned soup into his mouth and did not reply.
Mother said, “It’s more than a visit. We’re planning to stay awhile.”
“Ever been there before?”
Father said, “I met a savage who lived there once. And I once ate a banana from Honduras. That tasted mighty good, so I figured why not migrate?”
But the captain ignored him. He said to Mother, “In most ways, Honduras is about fifty years behind the times. La Ceiba’s a hick town.”
“That suits me,” Father said. “I’m a hayseed from way back. But we’re going to Mosquitia.”
Mother stared at him. It was news to her.
“That’s the Stone Age,” the captain said. “Like America before the pilgrims landed. Just Indians and woods. There’s no roads. It’s all virgin jungle.”
“America’s verging on jungle, too,” Father said, and frowned again.
“And swamps,” the captain said. “They’re so bad, once you get in, you never get out.”
“It sounds perfect,” Father said. He seemed genuinely pleased. “You know it like the back of your hand, do you?”
“Only the coast, but that’s bad enough. You wouldn’t catch me inland. Some of the crew come from those parts. One’s in the brig at the moment. I’ll pay him off in port and he won’t set foot on another ship again. A lot of those fellows give me headaches, but I’m in charge here.”
“Must be nice to be king of your own country,” Father said.
The captain stared at him, and yet I was sure that Father was serious and paying him a compliment.
“Gurney Spellgood’s got a mission there. His church is somewhere upriver.”
Father said, “I think his theology’s shaky.”
“What line of business might you be in?” the captain asked, annoyed by what Father had said about Rev. Spellgood.
But Father didn’t reply. He hated direct questions, like Where are you going? What are you doing? and What’s it for? We never asked.
Mother said, to break the silence, “Allie—my husband—used to be quite interested in the Bible. He and Reverend Spellgood were discussing it. That’s all he means. He’s the only person I know who actually invites Jehovah’s Witnesses in the house. He gives them the third degree.”
Father said, “I’ve tinkered with it, in a general sort of way. It’s like the owner’s guide, isn’t it? For Western civilization. But it doesn’t work. I started wondering. Where's the problem? Is it us or is it the handbook?”
“And what will you be doing in Mosquitia with this fine family?”
A direct question. But Father faced him.
“Growing my hair,” Father said. “You might have noticed I have long hair? There’s a reason for it. I’ve done a lot of traveling, but I like to keep to myself. It’s hard in America—all those personal questions. I can’t stand answering them. What does this have to do with hair? I’ll tell you. It was the barbers who always asked them the most. They used to give me interviews. But after I stopped getting haircuts, the questions stopped. So I guess I’ll just go on growing it for my peace of mind.”
“We had a fellow like you on board a few years ago. He was planning to spend the rest of his life in Honduras. He went ashore. We took on our cargo. It was pineapples. The fellow came back with us. Couldn’t bear it. He lasted two days.”
“Don’t you wait for us,” Father said, “unless you want your pineapples to rot.”
The captain said, “I brought my family along on one run. They spent a few days up in Tegoose, and then visited the ruins. It was a nice take-in.”
“I don’t feel we’re going to ruins so much as we’re leaving them,” Father said. “And speaking of bitter and hasty nations, just before we came down to Baltimore we had a little shopping to do. We went into Springfield, one of those shopping centers that are more like shopping circumferences. We were buying shoes, and when I paid the bill I looked through the stockroom door where there was a bulletin board for the employees. A slogan’s written on it in big letters. It says, ‘If you have sold a customer exactly what he wanted, you haven’t sold him anything.’ A shoe shop. It made me want to go away in my old shoes.”
“That’s business,” the captain said.
“That’s ruins,” Father said. “We eat when we’re not hungry, drink when we’re not thirsty, buy what we don’t need, and throw away everything that’s useful. Don’t sell a man what he wants—sell him what he doesn’t want. Pretend he’s got eight feet and two stomachs and money to burn. That’s not illogical—it’s evil.”
“So you’re going to Honduras.”
“We need a vacation. If we’d had the money, we would have gone to the island of Juan Fernandez. But we didn’t want to sell the pig.”
Mother laughed at this. She often laughed—she thought Father was funny.
“My family’s grown up,” the captain said. “My wife’s happy where she is, which is Verona, Florida. And this ship is my home. But I’ve put into a fair number of ports—the East Coast, Mexico, Central America, through the Canal and up the other side, and I’ll tell you, give or take a few palm trees, they’re all the same.”
“That’s a kind of fear,” Father said. “When a man says women are all the same, it proves he’s afraid of them. I’ve been around the world. I’ve been to places where it doesn’t rain and places where it doesn’t stop. I wouldn’t say those countries are all the same, and the people are as different as dogs. I wouldn’t go if I thought they were all the same. And if I was a ship captain I’d stay in my bunk. I expect places to be different. If Honduras isn’t, we’ll go home.”
“Gurney sings its praises. Bummick works with the fruit company. That’s another story, but he must like it or he wouldn’t stay.”
“If there’s space we’ll be happy. We ran out of space in America, and I said, ‘Let’s go!’ People don’t normally say that. Ever notice? Americans never leave home? People say they want a new life. So they go to Pittsburgh. What kind of new life is that? Or they go to Florida, and they think they’re emigrating. Like I say, I’ve done a lot of traveling, but I’ve never met any Americans who planned to stay where they were, apart from a few cripples and retards, who didn’t know where they were. Most Americans are homing pigeons, and none of them has the conviction to do what we’re doing—picking ourselves up and going to a different country for good. I suppose you think it’s disloyal, but a man can only take so much. Me? I feel better already on this ship. That’s why I’m telling you what I couldn’t tell anyone back home. If I’d said I was leaving, they’d call me an outlaw. Americans think that leaving the States for good is a criminal act, but I don’t see any other way. We need elbow room, so we can think. Right,” Father went on—and now he was laughing—“as you probably noticed, I think with my elbows!”
All the time, the twins, Jerry, and I were jammed against the wall, our arms bumping as we ate. The twins had crumbled crackers into their soup because the captain had. But they had not eaten theirs, because it looked like swill. And Jerry, who hated sausages (Father always said they put horses’ lips and cows’ ears into them), hardly touched the main course, except for a few peas. The kids were also kicking each other under the table. I was so ashamed of them, I ate everything that was put in front of me by the black waiter. I was at the captain’s end of the table and he complimented me, saying I had quite an appetite and I was going to grow up to be a big fellow and did I have a hollow leg?
He said to me, “If you like, I’ll show you the bridge. I’ve seen you fishing from the stern. We’ve got sonar. You can spot fish on the screen and you’ll know the right time to use your line. Want to come up?”
I asked Father if it was all right.
“You heard him, Charlie. The captain’s in charge here. This ship is his country. He can do as he pleases. He makes the rules. All these men and bilge pumps are his, whether they work or not.”
“I fly the Stars and Stripes, Mr. Fox,” the captain said. “I don’t run my coun
try down.”
“Nor do I,” Father said.
The captain drank air slowly, then said, “I heard you doing it.” “I don’t have a country,” Father said. “And someday soon, neither will you, friend.”
Mother said, “Captain, I’d like to go below decks and see the cargo holds, the engine room, and where the crew is. The children would be interested. It would be a good lesson—they could do some pictures of it.”
“See, we’re educating these kids ourselves,” Father said. “I wasn’t happy with the schools. They’re all playgrounds and fingerpainting. Subliterate teachers, illiterate kids. The blind leading the blind. Of course, they’ll all turn out rotten—it’s despair.”
“Home study has its limitations,” the captain said.
“Ever tried it?” Father said.
The captain said the public schools were fine by him, and “I’ve never had any grief with the school system.”
Hearing this, Father reached to one of the shelves and pulled a book out. He put it in Clover’s hand. He said, “Open it, Muffin, and read what you see.”
Clover opened it and read, “Compass error is sometimes used in compass clackuations as a sah-speficic term. It is the al-alga-alga-breek sum of the vary-variations and dah-viation. Because vary variation depends on gee-geographic location, and dah-der-viation upon the ship’s heading—”
“That’s enough,” Father said, and snapped the book shut. “Five years old. I’d like to see a school kid do that.”
Clover smiled at the captain and put her hands on her belly.
“Smart girl,” the captain said.
“Take this energy crisis,” Father said. “It’s the fault of the schools. Wind power, wave power, solar power, gasohol—it’s just a sideshow. They have fun talking about it, but everyone drives to school on Arab gas and Eskimo oil, while they jabber about windmills. Anyway, what’s new about windmills? Dutch people have been using them for years. The schools go on teaching worn-out lessons and limping after the latest fashions. No wonder kids sniff glue and take drugs! I don’t blame them. I’d take drugs, too, if I had to listen to all that guff! And no one sees how simple it might be. Hey, I’m thinking out loud, but take magnetism. Ever hear anyone talk sense about magnetic energy?”
“Generators have magnets in them,” the captain said.
“Electromagnets. They need energy. That means fuel. I’m talking natural magnets.”
“I don't see how that would work.”
“The size of a Ferris wheel,” Father said.
“They don’t come that big.”
“A thousand of them, on a pair of wheels.”
“They’d just stick together,” the captain said.
“I’m way ahead of you,” Father said. “You set them at various angles, over three hundred and sixty degrees, so there’s a push-pull effect with the alternating magnetic fields.”
“What’s the point?”
“A perpetual-motion machine. The point is you could light a city with something like that. But tell anyone about it and he looks at you as if you’re crazy.” Father faced the captain, as if defying him to look at him that way.
Mother said, “Allie’s an inventor.”
“I was wondering,” the captain said.
“Strictly speaking,” Father said, “there is no such thing as invention. It’s not creation, I mean. It’s just magnifying what already exists. Making ends meet. They could teach it in school—Edison wanted to make invention a school subject, like civics or French. But the schools went for fingerpainting, when they could have been teaching kids to read. They encouraged back talk. School is play! Harvard is play!”
“The captain is offering you some coffee, Allie.”
The captain held the coffeepot over Father’s cup.
Father said, “Ain’t that always the way? You get on to a really serious subject, like the end of civilization as we know it, and people say, ‘Aw, forget it—have a drink.’ It’s a funny world. I’m damned glad we’re saying good-bye to it.”
“You won’t have a coffee, then?” the captain said.
“No thanks. The caffeine in it makes me talk too much. Hey, I like this banana boat! I’ll just go back to my cabin and smoke a joint.”
I thought the captain’s eyes were going to burst.
“Just joking,” Father said.
9
THE Unicorn was moving more slowly now. I knew it from the pins on the map. I told Father this, and he said, “You keep an eye on those pins, Charlie. I’ve got my hands full, hiding from Gurney Spellgood and his gospelers. He prays for me to join him—I pray for him to leave me alone. We’ll see whose prayers get answered.”
Later that morning I was looking at the clustered pins when Emily Spellgood jumped behind me and said, “Why aren’t you fishing?”
“Don’t feel like it.” I walked out to the deck.
She followed me, saying, “Where do you come from?”
“Springfield,” I said, naming the biggest place I knew.
“I never heard of Springfield,” she said. “What’s their team?” What was she talking about? I said, “It’s a secret.”
“We’re from Baltimore. Baltimore’s got the Orioles. That’s my team. They almost won the World Series. I’m wearing a new bra.”
I walked to the stern.
“I know why you aren’t fishing,” she said. “That seagull you killed took your fishing line away. You deserved to lose it, because you’re a murderer. You murdered an innocent bird, one of God’s creatures. They’re good—they eat garbage. My father said a prayer for that bird.”
I said, “My father said a prayer for your father.”
“He’s got no right to do that,” she said. “My father doesn’t need any prayers. He’s doing the Lord’s work. I bet you don’t even have a team.”
“Yes, I do. They’re on television.”
“What’s your favorite TV program?”
This stumped me. We didn’t have a television. Father hated them, along with radios and newspapers and movies. I said, “Television programs are poison.” It was what Father always said.
“You must be sick,” Emily said, and I felt that Father had let me down, because I did not know what to say next.
Emily said, “I watch The Incredible Hulk, The Muppet Show, Hollywood Squares, and Grizzly Adams, but my favorite is Star Trek. On Saturday afternoon, I watch the ‘Creature Double Feature’—I saw Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster and Godzilla. They were real scary. On Sunday morning we all watch The Good News Show and sing the hymns. My father was on TV, on The Good News Show. He read the lesson. He lost his place and had to stop. He said the lights hurt his eyes. TV lights can give you a wicked burn—that’s why all the people are red. I’ll bet your father’s never been on a TV show.”
I said, “My father’s a genius.”
“Yeah, but what does he do?”
“He can make ice with fire. I saw him.”
“What good is that?”
“It’s better than praying,” I said.
“That’s a sin,” Emily said. “God will punish you for that. You’ll go to hell.”
“We don’t believe in God.”
This shocked her. “God just heard you!” she shouted. “Okay, who made the world, then?”
“My father says whoever it was did a bad job and why should we worship him for making a mess of things?”
“Jesus told us to!”
“My father says that Jesus was a silly Jewish prophet.”
“He wasn’t Jewish,” Emily said. “That’s for sure. You must go to a real dumb school, if you think that.”
I did not want to talk about school—or God either—because I only half-remembered the things Father had told me.
Emily said, “We study communications at school. Miss Barsotti teaches it. She’s got a new Impala. It’s real neat—white, with red upholstery, and air-conditioned. It gets eighteen miles to the gallon. She gave me a ride, in the front seat. Our school i
n Baltimore has two swimming pools—one’s an Olympic-sized. I’ve got my intermediate badge. That day—the day of the ride—Miss Barsotti bought me a Whopper and a Coke. She says her boyfriend’s bionic.”
This speech left her breathless. I had no school, no swimming pool, no Miss Barsotti. I looked over the rail, into the green slab of ocean, and thought, If this is the kind of creep who goes to school, Father’s right. But she knew things that I did not know, she moved in a bigger and more complicated world, she spoke another language. I could not compete. She demanded to know my favorite movie star and singer, and though I had heard Father dismiss these people as buffoons and clowns, there was no conviction in my voice when I repeated what he said. She wanted to know my favorite breakfast cereal—hers was Froot Loops—and I was too embarrassed to say that Mother made our cereal out of nuts and rolled oats, because it seemed makeshift and ordinary. She said, “I can do disco dancing,” and I was lost.
I said, “Your father’s a missionary. You don’t live in Baltimore at all.”
“Yes, we do. My father’s got two churches. One’s in Guampu—Honduras—and the other one’s in Baltimore. The Baltimore one’s a drive-in.”
“What kind of drive-in?”
“There’s only one kind—with cars, outdoors. The people drive in and pray—but on Sunday mornings, when there’s no movie. Gosh, you’re stupid. You’re like a Zambu.”
Emily Spellgood was from that other world that Father had forbidden us to enter. And yet it seemed glamorous to me. It was something you could boast about. It made our life seem dull and homemade, like the patches on our clothes. But if I could not have that life, then I was glad we were going far away, where no one would see us.
I was saved by Captain Smalls. He walked out to a balcony on the top deck and said, “Come on up, Charlie. I want to show you something.”
“I’m going to help him steer the ship,” I said, and walked away from Emily Spellgood.
On the bridge, Captain Smalls showed me the compass and the charts. He let me hold the wheel and he demonstrated the sonar—schools of fish showed as shadows and bleeps. Two decks down and still at the stern, Emily stood at the rail. Near her were two crewmen, one hosing water against a cargo hatch and the other swabbing with a mop.
