The Mosquito Coast

by Paul Theroux

  I said, “My father invented a mechanical mop. You sort of dance with it, but it works all by itself.”

  “Your father seems quite a fellow.”

  “He’s a genius,” I said.

  “He’d better be,” the captain said. “You know where he’s taking you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “See the man on that kingpost on the foredeck?”

  The man was on the top of an orange pillar, brushing white paint on it.

  “The reason he can do that so good is because he’s half monkey. They practically live in the trees where he comes from. Some of them have tails. Ain’t that right, Mr. Eubie?”

  Mr. Eubie was at the wheel, but not moving it. He said, “They sure do, Captain.”

  “That’s where you’re all going—where he comes from.”

  I looked hard at the hanging man, and I could see his resemblance to the men at Polski’s.

  “The Mosquito Jungle,” the captain said. “Some people there have never seen a white man or know what a wheel is. Ask Reverend Spellgood. If they want to eat, they just climb a tree and grab a coconut. They can live for nothing. Everything they need is right there—free. Most of them don’t wear any clothes. It’s a free and easy life.”

  I said, “That’s why we’re going.”

  “But it’s no place for you,” the captain said. “Picture a zoo, except the animals are outside, and the human beings are trapped in cages—houses and compounds and missions. You look through the fence and you see all the creatures staring in at you. They’re free, but you’re not. That’s what it’s like.”

  “My father will know what to do.”

  The captain said, “Tegoose is pretty bad, but at least it’s a city. I wouldn’t send my family alone into the jungle to get bitten alive and grinned at and yelled at.”

  “We won’t be alone,” I said.

  “I hate bugs,” the captain said. “You’ll never see a bug on this ship. I don’t stand for them. But your father must like them a lot. Snakes, beetles, bugs, flies, mosquitoes, mud, rats.” He shook his head. “And stinks.”

  The telephone rattled. Captain Smalls answered it and an inhuman voice on the line jabbered at him. He said “Yep” and hung up, then spoke to Mr. Eubie. “We’ve got some weather ahead.” To me he said, “We might be in for a blow. You better run along now, but you come back and see me.”

  At lunch, Father asked me what the captain had said about him “I’ll bet he’s been running me down, eh?”

  “No,” I said. “He just showed me his sonar.”

  “I wonder what else he got for Christmas.”

  Jerry said that one of the younger Spellgoods had told him about scorpions. You died if they bit you. Clover and April had spoken to one of the crew members. Clover said, “He taught us ‘grassy-ass.’

  ” Father said, “I got bitten by a scorpion once, and I’m still here. And I speak Spanish like a native. And as for sonar, Charlie, I’ve read up on it, and I could teach that captain more than he could learn!”

  “You’re paranoid,” Mother said, and left the table.

  “She’s mad about something,” Father said. Then he looked at us. “Do you think I’m paranoid?”

  We said no.

  “Then follow me.”

  He led us to the afterdeck. Rev. Spellgood had just begun preaching from his usual place on a winch platform. He stood there, under the cloudy sky, his hair blowing sideways, squawking to his assembled family. But seeing Father, he jumped down and welcomed him. Father said we were busy. Rev. Spellgood said he had a present for him—a Bible.

  “Don’t need it,” Father said.

  Spellgood thought this was funny. He cackled and looked over his shoulder at his family. “You need one of these, brother,” he said, and showed him a book covered with dungaree cloth.

  “Keep it.”

  “This is the newest one,” Spellgood said. “The Blue-Jeans Bible. A whole team of Bible scholars in Memphis translated it. It was designed by a psychologist.”

  Father took it and turned it over in his hand. Then he held it between two fingers as if it were soaking wet.

  “There’s a Spanish version, too. We use them in our parish. Those people appreciate it. The other ones, with the gold leaf and the ribbons and all the begats, used to scare the wits out of them. That’s for you, brother.”

  Father showed it to us. The dungaree cloth was real, stitched over the cover, and there was a little pocket riveted onto the back.

  “Take a good look, kids,” Father said. “This is the kind of thing I’ve been warning you about.” He handed it to Rev. Spellgood, saying, “Your kingdom is not of this world, Reverend. Mine is.”

  “May God forgive you.”

  Father said, “Man is God.”

  We continued past the hatches on the afterdeck to where the tall steel pillar was. The booms we had seen swinging cargo from the pier in Baltimore were secured, each by six thick cables. Father said these were the shrouds. They held the booms in place, he said, and were attached by blocks to the top of the derrick.

  “The kingpost,” I said.

  “Sorry, Charlie. The kingpost.”

  “That’s what the captain called it.”

  “Well, if that’s what he called it, that must be its name,” Father said. “That there’s a davit, and those, as I said, are shrouds. I wonder how high you could climb on those shrouds. Think you could make it to the top?”

  The skies—three portions now—were purple and pale yellow and smoked. The wind was streaked with flying spit. Clouds had drifted into gatherings of old-fashioned hats, with peaks and plumes, and the sea no longer looked tropical. It was harbor-colored and streaming with chips of froth, and seemed pushed from below by shapes like whales’ shoulders and sharks’ fins.

  “Think you can do it, Charlie?”

  As the ship rolled slowly, I saw the post and the booms and the shrouds that held them, cutting back and forth. But looking up like this nauseated me. I told Father I felt seasick. He said to look at the horizon awhile and I would feel better.

  “Seasickness is just a misunderstanding in the inner ear.”

  “Jee-doof!” Rev. Spellgood’s voice traveled to us in drawling pieces on the wind. “Loave ... the Load’s marcy...” And the wind moaned in the shrouds the way it did in Polski’s fences on winter nights, the loneliest sound in the world, air sawing a thin cry from a wire.

  I said, “It might rain.”

  “Water never hurt anyone.”

  Jerry said, “Charlie’s scared.”

  “Charlie isn’t scared,” Father said. “He’s studying the shrouds for handholds, aren’t you, son?”

  “There’s a ladder on the post,” Clover said.

  “Any fool can climb a ladder,” Father said. “But those shrouds—if you climb those, you’ll be hanging right over the water.”

  “Up here?” I pointed to where they crossed the deck.

  “No,” he said, “on the outside.” He gestured into the spitting wind. “That’s the fun of it. Boys your age used to do that all the time on the great sailing ships.”

  He was testing me, as he had on the beach near Baltimore, where he had challenged me to sit on the rock. The kingpost was no higher than elms I had climbed in Polski’s meadow, but the roll of the ship and the streaming white-chipped sea made my guts ache.

  I said, “My foot hurts.”

  “Use your hands.”

  In a whisper, I said, “Dad, I’m afraid.”

  “Then you’ll have to do it,” he said, “because doing it is the only way of not being afraid of it. Or would you rather join those Holy Rollers and forget the whole thing?”

  The Spellgoods had started a hymn, which the wind twisted into a slow-fast grunt-groan.

  There were no crosswires on the shrouds. They were simple and thick—six cables angling up to the blocks at the top of the kingpost. If I shinnied them, I’d be dangling. But I saw a better method. By shinnying part of the way and then
setting my feet against the far shroud I could move vertically, like walking up a wall by holding a fixed rope. It was possible.

  “You’re delaying,” Father said. “You’re just getting more scared.”

  “The captain might yell at me.”

  “So it’s that fruit you’re afraid of!”

  Jerry said, “Let me try it, Dad.”

  “You can go after Charlie.”

  That was my incentive. In order to see Jerry try and fail, I would have to do it first. I kicked my shoes off and climbed to the lower blocks that held the shrouds to the ship’s side. I pulled myself up. Father said, “Good boy.” A few feet more and I was looking at the top of his baseball cap.

  The wind pressed me, and the gulls, like rags gone mad, screeched at me, as if in revenge for the one I had killed. And I could hear Rev. Spellgood’s high voice, leading his family in the hymn. I was only eight or ten feet up, but already the wind was as strong as on a hilltop, for the deck was sheltered by the canvas on the rail. I hoped Father could see my pants flapping, and how the wind dragged my legs out as I climbed. Halfway up, I turned and set my feet against the far shroud and wedged myself there to rest my arms, like a spider in a crack.

  I was staring directly down at the sea. It was boiling under me, mostly suds, and some of the spray reached my feet. The shrouds up here played a different tune in the wind, a lonelier cry, because they were closer together. And the roll of the ship made me swing. It was the first time on this ship I had been cold. The movement and the cold sickened me, so I stared at the sea awhile. The weather had gotten so bad it was impossible to tell where the water met the sky, and this made me feel sicker. It all looked like old blankets. Gulls kept screeching at me from high up on the post, slashing at the cottony mist with their beaks.

  Braced against the shrouds and trying to walk horizontal, I started off again. The shroud cables were greasy, and my hands and feet slipped in the gunk if I moved too fast. The next time I looked down, Father was tiny. This little figure on the deck was making me do this! And he wasn’t even looking! I struggled against the slimy cables in the high wind and saw that I had only six feet to go. But this was the hardest part—the shroud cables were bunched together and I could not fit between them. I could see clearly the wheels in the blocks and the manufacturer’s brass plate, speckled with salt, bolted to the top of the kingpost.

  Now the whole white ship was pitching and rolling in a hilly black sea. I felt I could not climb any higher. I held on tightly and had another dread—that I would not be able to get down. I could only fall. Miles away, on the whitened water, a dark hooded cloud pushed like a demon through other clouds of shabby yellow. I did not know whether the spats of water hitting me were rain or spray, but their pelting frightened me and froze my hands.

  “Attention!” It was the captain’s voice coming over the loudspeaker. I was surprised to hear it above the wind. “Rodriguez and Santos to the afterdeck. Wear your life jackets and bring a line. Mr. Fox, stay right where you are!”

  I thought he meant me, and hung on. The next thing I knew, a black man was kicking his way up the shrouds beneath me. He wore a yellow life jacket, and a rope was strung out behind him. One thing pleased me—he was climbing just the way I had, shinnying first, then bracing himself against the cables like a spider. His eyes were wide open and he was breathing hard. He appeared just under me, put his arms around my waist, and plucked me off, not saying a word. Then he wrapped his legs around the shroud and slid down, dangling me over the water like a sack of feed. His tight grip and his dog smell were worse than the sight of the sea frothing beneath us. The black man passed me to another man on deck, and that man placed me gently at Father’s feet.

  The captain meanwhile was shouting at Father and not waiting for answers. Who do you think you are? and Are you trying to kill that boy? and You’ve got no right—

  But Father had crossed his arms. He defied the captain with a kind of deaf-man’s smile.

  “Have you got a hole in your head!” the captain yelled.

  Father uncrossed his arms and looked unconcerned.

  “If you want some excitement, you’re going to get it, because we’re in for a spell of bad weather. But if you give me any more trouble like this, I’ll put you all ashore at San Juan. Now you'remember that, Mr. Fox.” He turned to me and said, “That was real stupid, Charlie. I thought you had more sense.”

  Father did not speak until the captain had stalked away. Then he said, “If you had climbed a little faster he wouldn’t have seen you. By the way, you didn’t make it to the top.”

  Jerry whispered, “Crummo.”

  I wished then that I had fallen off the shrouds and into the sea and drowned. They would have been sorry. And I had half a mind to throw myself overboard, but one look at the water frightened me.

  It was only three in the afternoon, but the sky was blankety gray and the sea swells layered with the chips that were beaten to spittle and moved as slow as paste along the rolling slopes. I staggered, but it was not from the scare I had got on the shroud—Jerry and the twins were staggering, too.

  Father said, “There’s something wrong with this vessel. Look.”

  He took a shuffleboard puck and set it on the deck upside-down, on its shiny side. It trembled across the deck, hit a davit, and bumped a railpost on the side.

  “The ship’s going up and down,” Jerry said.

  “Just down,” Father said. “She’s yawing. If she was rolling properly, that shuffleboard pancake would slide back. But she’s just setting there.”

  Clover said, “The deck’s all slanty.”

  “She’s listing,” Father said. He looked up at the bridge and grinned. “That’s why he’s all het up. You want to go up there and ask your friend what’s wrong?”

  He was talking to me. I shook my head. I didn’t dare face the captain after what he had said to Father about my climbing the shrouds. The captain didn’t understand that this was a game we often played. And if I had done it better, Father would not have been caught and yelled at.

  “He doesn’t want to ask the captain,” Father said. “How about you kids? You want to go up there and hear what he has to say?” Clover said, “I want to ask you.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  Mother came down the deck in her yellow slicker, holding the rail. She said, “One of the men just told me there’s a storm coming. You’d better get inside—it’s already rough.” She looked at me. “Charlie, you’re covered in grease!”

  “He was climbing the shrouds—on my orders. He came down on the captain’s orders.”

  Mother looked helplessly at Father, and with real agony. I thought she was going to cry.

  “Don’t you turn on me, Mother.”

  “Get them inside,” she said.

  Father said, “The problem isn’t the storm—it’s the ship. I imagine he sealed that bulkhead after it filled up. Couldn’t pump it out. What’s the weight of a gallon of water, April?”

  “Eight point three three seven pounds,” April squeaked.

  Clover made a pouting face. “I was going to say that.”

  “What with the weight of a full bulkhead, and a heavy sea, some of the cargo has shifted. If the port-side pump’s crapped out, he can’t counterbalance by filling or emptying the ballast tanks. It’s basically a pump problem. So we’ve got a list of about twenty degrees. See the deck? It’s all uphill. You could ski down it.” Father looked at me. “Some captain he is—can’t keep his ship on an even keel!”

  The Spellgoods were on their knees near the winch platform that had become their open-air church. They wore pointed rainhats, and the row of them looked like a picket fence.

  “Come over here, brothers and sisters!” Rev. Spellgood cried. His wet hair was glued in a strip across his nose. “Pray with us awhile. Pray for the waters to subside.”

  “This is nothing,” Father said. “It’s going to get a lot worse. This far south? Probably a hurricane—probably already got a name,
like Mable or Jimmy.”

  “Pray for the hurricane, then,” Rev. Spellgood said. “Prayer is the answer.”

  Father honked at him. He told him to do something practical. He said the ship was listing twenty degrees and yawing.

  “Prayer is practical! Prayer is an air-mail stamp on your love letter to Jesus!”

  But Father went on honking and pushed us through the cabin door. He said, “Gurney’s a frightened man. His Blue-Jeans Bible’s got a rip in the seat of its pants. He doesn’t know what’s happening, so he’s praying like it’s going out of style. / know what’s happening—bulkhead full, cargo shifted, list to port, a yaw. That’s a solvable problem, if you have the know-how. Nothing to pray about. But I’m not in charge here—you heard the man. I’m a paying passenger, and I intend to play gin rummy until they ring the dinner bell, unless that’s busted, too!”

  He seemed very pleased, having figured out what was wrong with the ship. In the hours before suppertime, he was the only member of the family who did not look green. He even suggested a game of Ping-Pong, but the table was slanted so badly it was impossible.

  At dinner that night, after the hymn of grace (“God who gave us Jeedoof's weal, Thank we for this preshuss meal”—I knew it by heart now), Rev. Spellgood made a speech. He stood up crookedly, like a man with a backache, because of the slant of the room. Though he faced his family and spoke to them, what he said was loud, and I knew he wanted everyone to hear.

  This is what he said. There was once a storm at sea, and the passengers on a ship in that fearful storm were seasick so bad the stew was half knocked out of them. They were rolling on the floor like pigs, screaming and crying. All day long the storm raged and they thought Mister Death was paying them a call. Then one of these sick people saw a small kiddo who wasn’t seasick and he asked the kiddo, “Kiddo, why ain’t you sick, when everyone else is puking their guts out and the sea’s so terrible awful?” The kiddo ups and says simply and innocently, “My father is the captain.” That kiddo believed, that kiddo trusted, that kiddo was different from all the pukers and spewers. The others were rolling around in misery, moaning and doubting and sick as dogs, while this kiddo was happy as a cricket. That kiddo had a valuable thing in his heart. He had faith. “My father’s the captain.”