by Paul Theroux
All this time, the Zambus were eating and hardly listening to what Father was saying. Father seemed glad for someone new to talk to. Maybe it took his mind off the failure of our expedition.
The men whispered among themselves, then one who had not spoken before said, “You are not telling the truth, are you—about the ice?”
“Practically an iceberg,” Father said. “It melted to mud, but there’s a whole lot more where that came from. We’ve got everything over there.”
“Guns?”
“I’ve got no use for guns. If I needed them, I could make an arsenal. But that’s desperate.”
But, he said, they reminded him of how he had felt in the States—like a prisoner, close to despair, murderous, half loco. It was frustration at the way things were shaking down, something like slavery, because the system made men into slaves.
“What did I do? I picked myself up and went away. I advise you to do the same.”
The Indians were squatting with their ugly dogs thirty feet away. They watched Father talking to the skinny men. It was impossible for me to tell what the Indians were thinking by looking into the smooth clay of their faces. The Indians might have been harmless, but the dogs were part of their group. The dogs’ fierceness made the Indians seem dangerous.
“They want you to go,” the stringy-haired man said.
“They don’t know what’s good for them,” Father said. “They don’t deserve ice, or anything else, if they can’t show common courtesy. But you,” he said, “you’re friendly enough.”
“That is our nature.”
“My Zambus probably think you’re Munchies.”
“Ah, Mosquitia!”
Father said, “I wish I could do something for you.”
“It would be helping us if you did not anger the Indians. If you simply went away.”
“Listen, one dark night you ought to get yourselves out of here. Do that. Clear out.” In English, Father added, “Get the drop on them.”
“The Indians say there is no path over the mountains.”
“They would, wouldn’t they? Listen, you won’t get a road map from them.”
“How far is it to your village?”
“A day’s march. More—if you’re carrying ice. But that’s our problem.”
“You will be home by nightfall.”
Father said suddenly, “I’ve got half a mind to blow this place wide open and get you the hell out of here.”
“That would be very foolish,” the man said, and did not blink. “Then it’s up to you.”
“Go,” the man said, “or they will punish us.”
We were given a calabash of wabool, and water, and a bunch of bananas. While we filled our water bag from a gourd, the three skinny men went over to the Indians. The Indians remained squatting on the ground, but their dogs ran away as the men approached. They did not begin barking until they had reached the rooty edge of the clearing. Without their dogs, the Indians looked nakeder and even a little afraid.
We left them like that, the Indians squatting, the three slaves standing. The dogs bounded forward and retreated, chasing us to the stream. They barked and stretched and showed us their wild cowardly eyes. All the other men were motionless. They were small beneath the vast hanging forest, watching us walk away. The women had not returned. The men looked as if they were posing for an oldfangled frightening picture.
On the trail, Father said, “What I can’t make out is how they got there in the first place.”
“Twahkas, Fadder?”
“No. The others.” He used a Spanish word, “The nameless ones.” Bucky said, “These jungles is fulla monkeys.”
“Monkeys don’t ask that many questions—”
Neither do slaves, I thought.
“—Something weird’s coming down here, people.”
We climbed out of the forest and behind the rock steeples and up the path we had made to the ridge of the mountains. Then, where we had made camp last night, we stopped again and passed the wabool around. We sat on the broken ice sled we had left, the remains of Skidder. Father said that someday a foreigner would find it and proclaim that a great civilization had existed here, and put Skidder in a museum. This made him laugh.
“And did you see those Indians’ faces when they saw the ice?” We looked at him.
“They almost keeled over.” He began to chuckle at the thought of it.
Jerry was searching Father’s face.
“They couldn’t believe it,” Father said. “They were goggling. Flabbergasted and confounded!”
Finally—because everyone else was perfectly silent—I said, “What ice?”
“The ice I showed them.”
I believed he was testing me again. I said, “It all melted, Dad.”
“That small piece,” he said.
This was not true.
“You saw it, didn’t you Jerry?”
“Yes, Dad.”
I thought, Crummo.
“Your long-faced brother’s trying to tell me we wasted our time. You need glasses, Charlie. You’ve got bad eyes. Probably an astigmatism, eh Francis?”
“For true,” the loyal Zambu said.
Father put Jerry on his back and carried him, while I walked behind with the Zambus. The Zambus’ tiredness showed in their faces. It had been a bewildering trip for them, the more so because they had expected the Twahkas to have tails—and maybe they did think the three skinny men were Munchies. There was a grayness on the Zambus’ bodies, and smudges on the gray, like the cloudy surface of purple grape skins. As we walked, they became more certain that they had seen the ice and the amazed Indians. “It is smuck in Fadder’s hand like a rock-stone.”
Father said, “It’s all downhill from now on.”
19
ON THIS downward path, in the tortoiseshell twilight, I thought of Father’s lie. I hoped he did not believe it, but how could he be rescued from repeating it?
Something like this might work—perhaps, in our two-day absence, things had not gone right in Jeronimo—perhaps some small problem had arisen, enough to interrupt him, not a disaster but a hitch, to prevent him from giving a loud speech saying our failure had been a success.
The Indians had not been flabbergasted! They had only squinted at us and at Father’s wet fingers, and sent out their slaves.
His lie made me lonelier than any lie I had ever heard.
Yet he had spoken it confidently and said the expedition was a triumph and he couldn’t wait to tell Mother. Again and again I tried to remember ice in Father’s hands and amazement on the faces of the Indians. But there was none: no ice, no surprise. It had all been worse and odder than his lie. They had told us to go away, and then the skinny slaves were peering at us and the dogs trying to bite our feet.
“Gaw, I love to walk home tired at the end of a good day with the sun in my eyes!”
Ahead, on the path, Father went on talking to the Zambus and Jerry.
“You can pack a man in ice and crisp him like celery and snap him out of sunstroke. That ought to be a useful application around here. And did I ever tell you about the advances in cryogenics?”
His voice tore through the trees and exhausted me. His confidence was something I did not want to hear now. I dreaded the thought of Father repeating his story in Jeronimo. And his lie scared me. Did you see those Indians’ faces? But the Indians’ faces were confused, they had monkey wrinkles, and they had tried to frighten us away by showing us black teeth like their dogs. Once I had believed that Father was so much taller than me that he saw things I missed. I excused adults who disagreed with me, and blamed myself because I was so short. But this was something I could judge. I had seen it. Lies made me uncomfortable, and Father’s lie, which was also a blind boast, sickened me and separated me from him.
“Charlie’s back there doing the best he can, people!”
I loved this man, and he was calling me a fool and falsifying the only world I knew.
I prayed for a hitch. My praye
rs were answered. Things were not right in Jeronimo. It was what I had wished, but, like most wishes that are granted, more than I bargained for.
Jeronimo was struck with quietness and a thin flutter of leaves. It had always softened and collapsed in twilight: it was the way the sun was strained through the trees, the way it glanced in weak glimmers off the river. It was the dust stirring. It was the way people were round-shouldered after such a long day of light and no clouds.
But this evening it was deadened. It had an atmosphere of disappearance and hiding alarm that said something had just happened, like the silence after a howl. There was a low skreak and skrittle of lizards watching from the undergrowth, and on the branches birds locating perches for the night, their polite strut at sundown.
Father halted us and said, “Somebody’s been here and gone.”
Fat Boy was not alight. The Maywit’s house was black—none of their normal lanterns—open windows, empty porch, no smoke.
“Allie.” It was Mother—her white waiting face in the Gallery.
Father walked toward her and asked her what was going on.
She said, “I thought something had happened to you, too.”
“Too?”
“The Maywits—they’re gone. I couldn’t stop them.”
Father said “I knew it,” and smiled at Francis Lungley.
But I felt responsible. I had prayed for something to happen, and it had. Anything to prevent Father from bursting into Jeronimo and lying about flabbergasted Indians and ice and you should have seen their faces.
Now Father was smiling at Clover. She had run from under the house and was hugging him and explaining.
“A motorboat came and took all the Maywits away. The man called you names. It was the missionary you sent back that day. Ma Kennywick yelled at him and Mr. Peaselee busted the pump and Ma said you were going to run wild when you hear about it. But you’re not, are you? Dad, was it spooky!”
Father looked at everyone in turn and his mouth bulged with satisfaction. “Why should I go wild?” he said. “I knew it was going to happen.”
Jerry said, “What about Drainy and the other kids?”
“They went away,” Clover said. “All of them, in the man’s motorboat.”
“What did I tell you?” Father said. He was grinning at the Zambus and they were grinning back.
Mother had come down from the Gallery with April, who was moping. Mother said, “I did everything I could, but they wouldn’t listen. They didn’t hear, they didn’t recognize me, they were so frightened.”
“Don’t tell me,” Father said firmly. “I know all about it. The Maywits ran off with that moral sneak in some polluting pig of a boat. Figgy’s friend. You don’t have to spell it out. I took one look across the clearing and I knew.”
Hearing “Figgy,” Mr. Haddy came forward and said, “It were puppysho. Them people jump everyways and we ain’t get a dum bit of peace. Ma Kennywick scared out of her skin and bellyaching ever since. Peaselee, he bawling too, about seeing some dum fool with ruckbooses. Man, we glad you here, Fadder.”
Father waited, then said, “And I know something else.”
He smiled and took a mouthful of the silence and swallowed it.
“Fadder know.” This was Francis Lungley, telling Bucky.
“Those Maywits have got a lot to learn.”
If he knew everything, why didn’t he know their real name?
I said, “Maywit isn’t their name. It’s Roper. They’re all Ropers.” “Who says?”
I told him what the kids had said, but I did not mention the Acre or that they were all afraid of him. Jerry, Clover, and April said nothing—they let me take the blame for knowing. Father was still smiling.
Mother said, “You should have said something before this, Charlie.”
“I thought Dad knew.”
Father said, “What else do you know?”
I was going to say—Those men you called slaves didn’t look like slaves, and the Indians looked scared. The ice melted before they could see it. You wouldn’t let us rest, you made Jerry cry by talking about the Holiday Inn, and it was a terrible trip, worse than the river trips and probably a failure.
But I said, “Nothing else.”
“Then I still know more than you do,” he said—but when had I ever doubted that?—“because I know they’re coming back.”
We went down to the bathhouse and stripped off our clothes. Father set the showers going—what a marvelous invention! It was like a car wash, with jets of water shooting from pipes on the walls. We were all inside, jostling in the fine spray, in the half-dark—Father, Jerry, the Zambus, and me. Fat Boy’s fire was out, so there was no hot water, but no one minded. The busy harmless sting of the showers took off the mountain dust and the bad memories.
Mother said, “I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Allie.”
“She doesn’t believe me,” Father said. “Pass the soap.”
He was proud of his soap. We had made it ourselves out of pig fat we had traded for ice. It was greasy yellow soap and felt like a handful of lard. “No additives,” Father said. “Why, you could eat that soap!”
“You weren’t here.”
“Didn’t have to be.”
“It was horrible,” Mother said. “That missionary—Struss.” Father said, “I know.”
Hollering through the bathhouse walls, Mother said, “It seems he was up in Seville in his boat. I don’t know what he saw there, but it must have been those ridiculous people praying. He came back accusing us all of blasphemy and spreading the lies of science.”
“Soap up,” Father said to the Zambus. They always washed in a squatting position, never standing up. Also, they kept their shorts on when they took baths. I couldn’t see them in the dark bathhouse, but I could hear the water pelting against their heads, and their spitting and guffing.
“Could they have been on their knees, praying to the refrigerator?” Mother said. “Whatever it was, your Reverend Struss was pretty upset. He came in swinging. We were doing harm, he said, leading his people astray. He was mostly yelling at the Maywits—he called them the Ropers. He made them get down at the riverbank while he splashed water all over them. It was a service of purification, he said, washing them clean of the sins we had taught them. Mrs. Kennywick didn’t know which way to turn, and Mr. Peaselee freaked out.”
Father said, “I could have told you.”
“I ordered him off the property. I said you were due back in ten minutes and you’d sink his boat.”
“Good thinking,” Father shouted back through the wall. “I would have, too!”
“They packed their bags. I mean bags. Paper ones. And they all left.”
Father said, “So they ran out on us.”
“They is scared,” Mr. Haddy said. His mouth was against the bathhouse wall, his front teeth sticking through. “The preacher is yartering about soldiers and trouble and ruckbooses.”
Father shut off the water.
“What soldiers?” he said, as we dripped.
“In the mountains. Over the hills. Down the river. Up the trees. With ruckbooses. Russians and what not. Peaselee hear them.”
Clover said, “He said you were just as bad as the soldiers.” “Peaselee said that?”
“The man. The missionary. He called you a Communist.”
Father led us out of the bathhouse. The Zambus hopped and danced and shook their fingers to get dry. Father wore a flour sack around his waist, his hair was dripping, and his body was as white as marble. He held one arm up, like a statue in front of a courthouse.
“None of this is news to me,” he said. “But I’ll tell you something you don’t know. They’ll be back, as sure as anything. Because this is a happy place, and the world isn’t. The world is plain rotten. People are mean, they’re cruel, they’re fake, they always pretend to be something they’re not. They’re weak. They take advantage. A cruddy little man who sees God in a snake, or the devil in thunder, will take you prisoner if he
gets the drop on you. Give anyone half a chance and he’ll make you a slave: he’ll tell you the most awful lies. I’ve seen them, running around bollocky, playing God. And our friends, the Maywits—sorry, Charlie, the Ropers—they’ll be lonely out there. They’ll be scared. Because the world stinks!”
He started up the path to the house, taking long white strides. “They’ll be back—just you wait. Remember where you heard it. Remember who said it.”
Mother stepped beside him and said, “How did it go with the ice?”
Father was still walking. He grunted. I listened hard, then I heard him say in a low voice, “We had shrinkage. I knew it was a mistake to lug so much of it that far.”
So he did not lie after all.
***
And the Acre in the jungle was ours. It was not the same without Drainy preaching and Alice doing the cooking and Peewee and Leon making baskets, but now, with fewer of us, it seemed larger, and we were able to spread out. Each of us had his own sturdy lean-to. We brought a rope from Jeronimo and fixed a swing to a tree by knotting the dangling end and sitting on it. Father would not have allowed this in Jeronimo. It wasn’t useful, because if someone wasn’t swinging on it, it just hung there—that would have been his objection—and was the waste of a good rope.
We ate yautia roots and wild avocados, and we repaired the camouflage in all the man traps—four of them, the deep holes nicely disguised with boughs. One day, in a trap, we saw a snake eating another snake—half of it choked down his throat and both snakes thrashing their tails. The eater could not crawl away or stop eating, so we could study it in safety. We brought it back to Jeronimo.
“There’s a perfect symbol for Western civilization,” Father said.
A spider monkey passed through our church tree another day and sat there picking his teeth. He watched us with curiosity, as if he wanted to play.
Then he sniffed, leaped from the tree, landed near a bush, and tore a small fruit ball from it. On his upward bounce he was back in the tree, eating it. He gnawed the skin and sucked out the inside, then rolled across the bough and tumbled away, yanking branches.
