The Mosquito Coast

by Paul Theroux

  Mr. Maywit said, “Wish we had a Chinese shop.”

  “He wants a Chinese shop!” Father said.

  Mr. Maywit flinched. “Buy some salt and flour and oil.”

  “Save your money,” Father said. “You don’t need any Chinese shops. The sea’s full of salt—sea salt, the best there is. No additives. Flour will be easy as soon as that corn is ready: we’re going to mill it ourselves. Look at it—wonder corn! I brought that hybrid seed myself, all the way from Massachusetts. It’s three times the size of your Honduras varieties.”

  “He say oil,” Mr. Harkins said.

  “I heard him, and my reply is, ‘Peanuts!’ Next to the spuds, there’s a half acre of goobers. But give them time. Don’t rush them. Are you going somewhere?”

  As soon as the potatoes and yams were harvested he was going to ban the planting of cassava. It was a lazy man’s crop, he said, I ike bananas. True, there was no weeding to be done, but cassava exhausted the soil and there was no nutrition in it. Growing it would turn us all into funny-bunnies.

  Work continued on Fat Boy, the fixing and welding of more pipes, the sealing of the tanks, and finishing the firebox and the chimney. Now, no one feared it. In fact, the Zambus preferred to work inside it because it was so much cooler there. It had double walls, and the roof and south side were faced with polished tin sheets that bounced the direct rays of the sun.

  “If those were solar panels, we’d be self-sufficient in electricity,” Father said. “But we don’t need electricity or fossil fuels—this is a superior civilization.”

  We tested it for leaks by filling it with water. There was a fine spray peeing from nine joints, which Father marked and sealed when it was drained. Then Father declared it finished and said that he and Mr. Haddy were going to Trujillo.

  “Plasma—for Fat Boy,” he said. He had arranged for some hydrogen and ammonia to be sent to Trujillo. He had not wanted it shipped all the way to Jeronimo for fear of arousing missionary curiosity and getting more unwelcome visitors, like Mr. Struss or anyone of the Spellgood persuasion, or Toyota dealers.

  “Used to shine windows up the Dunker with ammonia water,” Mr. Maywit said.

  “Up the Shouter,” Mrs. Maywit said.

  “Never mind,” Mr. Maywit said.

  Mr. Haddy remarked that there wasn’t a glass windowpane in the whole of Jeronimo, which was true.

  “You can do anything with ammonia,” Father said. “The ammonia clock is the most accurate timekeeping device in the world. You don’t believe me?”—Mr. Maywit was frowning—“Listen, the tick-tock in it is the oscillation of the nitrogen atom in the ammonia molecule. Francis knows all about it, don’t you?”

  Francis said, “For true, Fadder.”

  “I employ enriched ammonia,” Father said. “What do you think I was doing up there in La Ceiba? Spitting in the plaza, like all the other gringos? No, sir. I was juicing up my ammonia. That’s my secret, really. The more enriched it is, the quicker your evaporation. You’ll see.”

  Mr. Maywit said, “I hear that.”

  “He do it all himself for the spearmint,” Mr. Haddy said, while the Zambus stared. “He richen it. That is the way.”

  “It’s more toxic,” Father said. The Zambus laughed at “toxic.” “But once it’s sealed into the system, there’s no danger. And it’s everlasting. Take the acids in your stomach. They’re not toxic, but they’re powerful substances. They could burn a pretty big hole in your shirt if they leaked out. And there’s ammonia in nature—you know, rotting vegetable matter, seawater, soil, even urine.”

  Mr. Maywit said he had heard that, too. “You want I come to Trujillo? I buy some salt and oil for Ma.”

  Father put his hand on Mr. Maywit’s flour-sack shirt, where it said La Rosa on the shoulder. “I need you here, coach. From now on you’re my field superintendent. You’ve got to stay, so you can tell me what to do.”

  Then he spoke to everyone—Mrs. Kennywick, the Zambus, Harkins, Peaselee, the Maywits, and us.

  “I take orders from you,” he said. “You’re in charge here. And if you want Fat Boy to work, you’ll have to send me down the river to Trujillo. To get his vital juices.”

  Eventually, Father encouraged them to say, Yes, please go—

  “In the meantime, pick some of those tomatoes. Him”—he poked Mr. Maywit’s flour-sack shirt—“he wants a Chinese store!”

  Mother asked him how long he would be away. Father said he guessed anything up to a week, “barring unforeseen circumstances.”

  The next day, the Little Haddy, streamlined for the river, left Jeronimo for the coast. Mr. Haddy was working the sounding chain and Father was at the wheel. Mr. Haddy said for all to hear, “But this used to be me lanch.”

  We ran along the riverbank, nearly to Swampmouth, but lost them in the deep green foliage Father had once compared to old dollar bills.

  ***

  With Father away, Jeronimo was very quiet—no speeches or songs, and the hammering stopped. The only sounds were the flap and splash, the prunt-prunt of the pump tower on the bank, and the sloosh of water in the culverts. The rest was the usual murmur of jungle, as continuous as silence, birds and bugs and monkey squawks, which changed in pitch with the heat and became a pressurized howl after nightfall.

  Mother did not take charge. When Father was around, we did things his way, he kept us jumping, but Mother had no inventions and never made speeches. When she did talk, it was often a gentle request for someone to show her the local way of doing something.

  The pepper-drying was a good example. After the small red peppers appeared in the low bushes, Mrs. Maywit said they would have to be dried. If Father had been around, he would have blazed a tensided tub out of sheet metal and called it his Pepper Hopper, or something of the kind, for drying peppers, the way he had made the fish trap and the bathhouse and the bamboo tiles.

  But Mother got Mrs. Kennywick and Mrs. Maywit to explain how to string the peppers and hang them. “You know best,” she said. It was a day’s work, this pepper-stringing, Mother and the other women squatting side by side on a mat in the yard, knotting the peppers on twine so that the lengths of them looked like firecrackers. Father would not have done it. and he certainly wouldn’t have squatted. He would have made himself a chair, probably a recliner, with a work surface, pedal-operated, maintenance-free, out of steamed and bent saplings. “Look how she fits the contours of the body, Mother!”

  Mother had the Zambus teach her how to gut and skin animals like pacas, and how to peg fish to a plank and dry them, and how to smoke meat. They were slow, dirty, traditional methods, but she was in no hurry, she said. And these became our lessons in Jeronimo—the household tasks of the jungle people, the preparation of things we picked or caught. She made sure that each of us understood the gutting and smoking. We were not free to play until we had mastered these chores.

  This was different from Father’s way. He was an innovator. He thought nothing of getting a dozen people to peel wood or dig ditches, and he would not tell them why until they had finished. Then he would say, “You’ve just made yourself a permanent enhancement!” Or he would ask them to guess what a particular thing was for (no one so far had guessed what Fat Boy was for), and laugh when they gave him the wrong answer. He had his own way of doing things, and he liked telling people that their own methods were just waste motion. “Now I’ll show you how it ought to be done,” he’d say, and as they gawked, he’d add, “How do you like that little wrinkle?”

  He had never been a good listener. But he knew so much he did not have to listen. We had heard his voice going like the Thunderbox wherever we were, and since the day we arrived, Father’s chatter had been as constant as the Jeronimo locusts from morning to night, and it was louder even than the googn-googn-googn-googn of the howler monkeys. But now his voice was gone. Nothing was built, there were no inspections, the forge went cold. No talk of “targets,” no sessions in the Gallery, and we stopped hearing “I only need four hours’ sleep!”<
br />
  We cleared the fish trap, weeded the garden, and picked the first tomatoes. Mother ran things smoothly, offering suggestions, not giving orders. She made cassava bread, something Father had not thought of doing. Mrs. Maywit provided the recipe. And Mrs. Kennywick showed her how to make wabool out of rotten bananas.

  In her quiet, inquiring way, Mother discovered an amazing thing. She had the idea that it would be educational for us to learn the names of the trees in and around Jeronimo. She asked the Zambus what they were called, and what they were used for, so that a little printed sign could be tacked to each trunk for us to memorize. She found out that a good few of the trees at the southern end of the clearing were sapodillas. Even the Maywits didn’t know that. The Zambus called them “chiclets” and “hoolies” and explained how to extract rubbery sap from the trees and boil it and pound it into sheets.

  “There’s enough chicle here to make a ton of rubber,” she said. She thought this was funny. “That’s what Allie would say. Wait till he hears. He’ll make us all galoshes.”

  Father’s work was work, Mother’s work was study and play, but mostly she left us to ourselves. We did not feel supervised as when Father was around, and little by little we ventured farther from the clearing, and even out of Jeronimo itself, away from the splash of our waterworks and the googn of our monkeys.

  ***

  Leaving, hacking a path, and setting up a camp had been my idea. It was like one of Father’s challenges, but I challenged myself to go by daring the others—it gave me courage. We dared the Maywit children, too, and called them names, and soon they were shouting “Crummo" and “Crappo” at each other. Alice and Drainy were not afraid, but the little ones, Leon and Veryl (who was known as Peewee), were timid and always lagged behind.

  We found a path that led away from the river and into a part of the jungle that was thick with screaming birds—bill-birds and crascos. There were monsters here, Drainy said, and all the Maywit kids agreed that it was in places like this that you met your Duppy. Clover said they were crapoid for thinking that. We put up our camp near a deep pool in a little pocket in the jungle, about half an hour’s walk from Jeronimo, through flame trees and lianas.

  “They’s munsters in the water,” Drainy said, and none of them would go into the pool. But it was because they did not know how to swim, which we did. Swimming there while they watched gave us a superior feeling, and Jerry told them they were spasticated.

  But they were not afraid of the water dogs or the snakes or green lizards. Some of those lizards were as big as cats. If we said, “There’s your Duppy in that tree,” they went crapoid, because they couldn’t see it. But when we saw a hairy piglike animal snuffling in the bushes, Alice said, “Oh, that’s a mountain cow.” It looked like a monster to me, but this little girl was not afraid, so we couldn’t be.

  For our camp here, we made first a lean-to out of branches, then a hut, and hammocks out of vines. Clover and Alice made seats for us, dug a firepit, and picked flowers. Clover was not strong enough to do the hard work herself, but she knew how to get the Maywit kids working. I saw that she was just like Father. She was firm like him and would not listen and wasn’t happy unless she was directing operations.

  There was a certain fanlike plant here that was edible, Alice said—the roots of it. Clover got everyone collecting these roots in homemade baskets, and we ate them. They tasted like raw carrots and were called yautia. With these and the bananas and fruit we picked on the way, we could have meals in this camp.

  Clover complained that Jerry and April never helped. Alice said, “Peewee’s a crummo, for true. Always eating and never picking.” Drainy said he did more work than anyone. No one squabbled in Jeronimo, but here everyone fussed.

  So I decided to invent money. It was no good getting everything free. From now on, I said, we would have to buy our food at the camp store.

  “Where’s the camp store, thicko?” Clover said.

  I said the first thing that came into my head—“You’re sitting on it”—and pointed to her little bench. By making Clover the storekeeper I shut her up, and I explained that stones and pebbles would count as money, because they were in short supply in this mossy place.

  Leon said, “Want to buy some food, Ma.”

  “Where’s your money?”

  “Ain’t got none.”

  “Then start digging.”

  This was a new game and a good one. We set out in search of stones, and everyone gathered a little pile. It was easy for me, because by diving into the pool I could pick up all the stones I wanted off the bottom. I became the richest person in the camp.

  Clover also ran the school, which was the first lean-to. Drainy ran the church—that was a tree on which he had fixed a wire cross. We made fences out of branches, and in one of the other lean-tos Drainy made a wire box he called the radio set. That was imaginary, but the telephone was real—two coconut halves connected by a piece of string.

  “This is like back home,” Jerry said.

  But it wasn’t. It was the way other people lived, with radios and schools and churches—and money. Yet I was happy here in the camp—happier than in Jeronimo. I liked this place for its secrecy and best of all because it was filled with things that Father had forbidden. Spending money at the store and talking on the telephone were pleasant things. And when Clover ran out of lessons, I became the schoolteacher. I showed the Maywits how to count money and do arithmetic and write their names. Jerry wanted to put up a No Trespassing sign, but I said that would only make people curious. Instead, I got everyone to help dig a hole on the path for a man trap, to catch intruders or even big animals like mountain cows. Drainy said there were tigers around—he meant jungle cats or jaguars—and I wanted to catch one. We embedded sharpened stakes at the bottom of the trap and covered the whole thing with a layer of branches and dirt, to make it look like part of the path. That was the Zambu way, Drainy said. Father would have killed us for doing this, but he was still on the coast.

  We said prayers, we sang hymns that Alice taught us, and we held long groaning church services in the shelter of the holy tree.

  We still helped at Jeronimo, gathering peppers and weeding and seeing to the fish trap and doing our other chores. But when this work was done and Mother was satisfied, we escaped to our camp in the jungle, returning to all the things that Father hated. This made up for everything we had never had in Massachusetts and it stilled a longing in me for the United States. In this way, I overcame my homesickness.

  We called our camp the Acre.

  The Acre helped me to understand something of Father’s pride in Jeronimo. Until we built our camp. I had not seen why he was so boastful of what he had made in Jeronimo. Father had insisted that we look closely at the garden and the paths and the waterworks. He wanted us to marvel at the way we could be bone-dry in the rain and cool on the hottest day and not be pestered by insects. He was happy, and at the Acre I knew why. I looked around and saw that the pattern of life and the things we had fixed ourselves were all ours. Even the Maywit children were pleased by what we had done. But I felt that ours was a greater achievement than Father’s, because we ate the fruit that grew nearby and used anything we found, and adapted ourselves to the jungle. We had not brought a boatload of tools and seeds, and we had not invented anything. We just lived like monkeys.

  It was Drainy’s idea that we should all be baptized. He said we would all go to hell if we weren’t, and he insisted that we do it the Dunker way, by getting into the deep pool while he said prayers over us. It seemed like fun, so we stripped down to our underwear and made ready for the baptism.

  “I’m the baptizer,” Drainy said. “I know how to do this.”

  “Only thing,” Alice said. “Drainy don’t know how to swim. He cain’t be a baptizer if he cain’t swim. He get et up by the munsters in the water.” She walked away.

  I said to Drainy, “If you’re really afraid, we can forget it.”

  “I ain’t afraid,” Drainy said,
and sat on the bank and dangled his feet in the water. “And you go to hell if you ain’t get dunked.” Clover said, “We don’t believe in hell. Only ignorant people believe in hell.”

  Drainy said, “If Alice pull down her bloomers and show her carkle, she go to hell, for true.”

  Alice was in the schoolhouse. She poked her head out of the window and yelled, “Drainy Roper, you get youself outta there!”

  Then she clapped her hand over her mouth.

  “That ain’t his name,” she said.

  Clover said, “You called him Drainy Roper. Roper—that’s what that missionary said before Father kicked him out.”

  “That is our name,” Veryl said.

  “You got a mouf!” Alice yelled.

  Drainy pulled his feet out of the pool and said, yes, that was their name, Roper. The missionary was right. And he was a Dunker. “If he was here,” Drainy said, “he could be the baptizer.”

  “If your name’s Roper, why is your name Maywit?” Jerry asked.

  “They’ve got two names,” April said.

  “We got one names,” Drainy said. “And it ain’t Maywit.”

  I said, “Where did the Maywit come from?”

  “You father give it to us,” Alice said. “And my father take it.” “If it wasn’t his name,” I said, “why did he take it?”

  “He afraid,” Alice said.

  Drainy said, “Of you father.”

  “You’re crappo,” Clover said.

  Drainy said, “You father can do magic.”

  “What he does isn’t magic—it’s science,” I said.

  “Science is worse,” Alice said.

  They would not believe me, and I was sorry, because Father had made them change their name. I said, “Sometimes I’m afraid of him, too.”