The Mosquito Coast

by Paul Theroux

  We walked beside the creek for a while. The land was broken by level terraces. Father said, “This is how a river is born. You’re seeing it with your own eyes. You didn’t have to get it out of a book. This is the source of oceans.”

  It was as if Father had created the stream with his speeches, as if he had talked it into existence with the racket and magic of his voice. From will power alone, so it seemed, he had made the pleasant valley appear. We were in the open, under a strong sun. In the jungle I had not felt exposed. There were so many different kinds of tree cover. But this valley felt like outdoors—bushy walls on both sides. The stream, shrunken in the dry season, was a green vein running through the middle of a wide rocky riverbed.

  “This is satisfactory,” Mr. Haddy said, borrowing one of Father’s words. “We can have a lanch here. Or one of them pipanto things.”

  There was a flat-bottomed boat in the shallow stream. It was a wooden trough, and a man was standing in its stern and poling it to a sandbank under some buttonwoods.

  Father said, “I think I can take credit for inventing that boat.”

  “That a pipanto,” Mr. Haddy said. “That a pitpan.”

  Father said that the fact that it was used by the Zambus and Miskitos made no difference. He had dreamed it up as the best design for our river, and he was pleased that the same design was used here.

  “It took these people a thousand years or more to invent this boat. How long did it take me, Figgy?”

  “We’re being watched,” Mother said.

  The man had drawn his boat up to the sandbank. He stood there like a heron, with one leg drawn up, staring at us. He was very thin, not as dark as a Zambu, and had choppy teeth.

  “Naksaa,” Father said. It was the most friendly all-purpose word, meaning hello, how are you, good day, thank you, and all the rest.

  Mr. Haddy gave the man his dead curassow and made it seem as if we had left Jeronimo and walked all that way and camped on the slope especially to deliver this present.

  “He look a little hungry,” Mr. Haddy said.

  The man was examining Father with shining eyes. He said, “Mr. Parks.”

  Then we knew he was a Miskito, because Miskitos could not pronounce F.

  Father said, “He knows me. Which is surprising, because I’ve changed.” He smiled. “I guess I have a reputation around here.”

  Mr. Haddy said to the Miskito, “Yep, that is Mr. Farkis.”

  The Miskito spoke excitedly to Mother. “This man give me my garden!” He began to recommend Father to us. He pointed past the buttonwoods to a hut and some tall cornstalks. “Big one right there. Big tomatoes, like this one”—he made a fist.

  “The hybrids,” Father said. “I practically kill myself making ice, and all I’m remembered for is the seeds I bought in Florence, Mass.”

  “And peppers like this!”

  “You came to Jeronimo and did some work, eh? I paid you off in seeds? Too bad about the ice. It was a good idea, but a little unwieldy.”

  The Miskito was saying, “Yes, yes.”

  Father said, “I invented this boat.”

  “Everybody got pipantos,” Mr. Haddy said. “And them that ain’t, got cayukas.”

  “This is my boat,” Father said.

  The Miskito insisted on taking us to see his garden, so we climbed the bluff above the sandbar and walked to his hut. It was a rickety patched hut of grass and palm leaves, but his garden sprawled beautifully around it. It was tall tassely corn and unpropped tomato vines, peppers, string beans, and summer squashes. There were muskmelons, too. These vegetables looked out of place in an Indian’s garden. There were no papayas, avocados, calabashes, or granadilla. This was like Hatfield; like Jeronimo. The Miskito had grown them all from seeds that Father had given him months before, when he had crossed the ridge to visit us. He had done a day’s work, or more, and taken the seeds as payment. He had never known seeds to sprout so quickly and bear such plump fruit.

  Father snapped a string bean and said, “Kentucky Wonders!”

  There were bananas near the hut, the sort of plantains the Indians called “plas,” because they were like flasks. But Father said the Miskito deserved no credit for growing them—they grew all by themselves.

  We heard the sound of whipping. It was the Miskito’s wife, thrashing rice stems against a frame and letting the rice grains fall on a cowhide mat. She stopped when the Miskito called her, and she served us wabool and fried bananas and roasted ears of corn. And she plucked Mr. Haddy’s curassow and trussed it to a spit over the fire.

  Father would not eat anything.

  “Don’t take it personally,” he said, waving the wabool away.

  Mother said, “It’s their custom. You know that.”

  “What about my customs?” Father said.

  I felt he had not changed at all, for he had always said this in Jeronimo.

  He grinned at the Miskito.

  “I’m saving up for later,” he said. “Hunger’s a good thing. Makes you determined. Food puts you straight to sleep. That thing you’ve got in your hand there”—the Miskito was holding the burned and greasy curassow—“that’s a soporific. Sure, you knew that, didn’t you? I’m not talking about starvation, but hunger. It’s nature’s mainspring. It’s a kind of strength.”

  He smiled at us. We sat on the ground, gnawing.bones alongside the Miskito’s pig named Ed.

  “There’s only one thing I really and truly crave,” Father said. “Think you can fix me up with a bath?”

  Speaking carefully and with sign language and noises, he explained that he wanted some privacy and hot water and a basket. The Miskito provided him with what he wanted. Father then hung the finely woven basket from a tree and had the Miskito fill it with hot water, so it streamed like a shower. This ritual took place behind the Miskito’s hut. We heard Father encouraging the Miskito and spitting water and scrubbing himself.

  Mr. Haddy said, “Fadder got customs, for true!”

  “That shower bath was better than a meal,” Father said when he was done. His face was pink. His ears stuck out. He jumped in the sun to dry. “And it’s taken the edge off my appetite. I needed that. I’m ready, Mother.”

  The Miskito was bewildered by all this business and by Father’s talk. As if to please him, he sent his wife into the garden to gather vegetables, about four bushels in pretty baskets. And as a last present, he handed Father the pole to his pipanto. Father went through the motions of refusing these gifts, but he accepted them when the Miskito loaded the baskets into the pipanto and waited by it, screaming softly for Father to go aboard.

  Mr. Haddy said, “He saying ‘lukpara’—ain’t worry.”

  Father stepped in and said, “I’m just borrowing it, Fred. You can have it back any time you like.”

  ***

  That was how we came to be floating down the Rio Sico that day. Father poled and Mr. Haddy hung over the bow looking for obstructions. “Rock-stone!” he cried, when he saw one. There were only five inches of freeboard, but there was not a ripple in this river. It was forty miles to the coast, and Father calculated that the river was flowing at four miles an hour.

  “Not fast enough, is it?” he said.

  As soon as we rounded the first big bend and the Miskito’s hut was out of sight, Father beached the pipanto. He found some loose wood for us to use as seats, wedging the planks amidships. He took off his shirt and rigged up an awning, tucking the tails into the starboard gunwales and stretching it over bent benches. He secured it by its sleeves.

  “Looks like an oxygen tent! That’s so you don’t get heat stroke.” He picked up a bundle of twigs. “And this is to give us a little speed. This is a real witch’s broom!”

  He lashed the twigs to the end of the pole, tying them with vines and turning it into a broomlike oar, so that he could scull from the stern one-handed.

  Then he made a smudge pot to keep the stinging gnats away, and, smoking, we set off again. He promised that we would be on the coast by n
ightfall.

  “Anyone get a look at that Miskito’s hut?” he asked.

  “They all look like that,” Mr. Haddy said.

  “That doesn’t make it lawful, Figgy. That pokey little thing will fall down in the first rain. He was a generous man and he had a spectacular vegetable garden, thanks to me, but that was some miserable hut.” We passed more huts on the riverbank, more Miskitos, pigs, and dogs. Father said, “Pathetic.”

  “You’ve got a gleam in your eye, Allie.”

  “Because I’ve just worked out what kind of hut suits this terrain.” “You said you were through with inventions.”

  “I didn’t come here to live in a grass hut,” he said. “I’m not Robinson Crusoe. Give me a little credit, will you? Hey, don’t touch those baskets!”

  Jerry had taken out a tomato and was polishing it on his knee. Father ordered him to put it back.

  “We’ll stop and get monkey food, if you’re hungry, but don’t eat those vegetables. Those are hybrids. Eat those and you’re living on our capital. When we get where we’re going, we’ll take them apart and use them for seed. They’re ripe enough.”

  Mother said, “That’s unfair.”

  “It’s propagation.”

  “You haven’t changed a bit.”

  Father swept his broom back and forth. He said, “My whole way of thinking has changed. No more chemicals, no ice, no contraptions. Jeronimo was a mistake. I had to pollute a whole river to find that out.”

  Mother said, “All Jerry wants is one lousy tomato!”

  “That tomato represents a whole row of vines. It contains a garden, Mother. Use your imagination.”

  “Please don’t fight,” Clover said.

  Mr. Haddy said, “Fadder having another speerience.”

  “Everybody shut up,” Father said. Then, “Who said anything about brain damage?”

  Father went on sculling us downriver with his broom, shouting the whole time. And he predicted that before nightfall we would be at Paplaya on the coast, within striking distance of Brewer’s Lagoon. Mr. Haddy turned around and stuck his teeth out at the name.

  “We could walk down that beach to Panama,” Father said.

  “We could walk up it to Cape Cod,” Mother said.

  Father laughed. “Cape Cod’s been blown away. We got out just in time. There’s nothing left—nothing at all. It’s gone, don’t you understand?”

  Mother said, “What are you talking about?”

  “The end of the world.” Father pointed north with his broom handle. “That world. Burned to a crisp.”

  “Jeronimo is back there,” Mother said.

  “Jeronimo was nothing compared to the destruction of the United States. It wasn’t only the burning buildings and the panic. Think of the people. Remember Figgy’s curassow? The way roasting made the meat fall off the bones? That’s what happened to millions of Americans. Their flesh just slipped off their bones. Then the scavengers came. Hatfield’s all ashes.”

  The twins began to cry.

  Mother tried to comfort them. She said to Father, “Look what you’ve done.”

  “I didn’t do anything but rescue us.”

  Jerry said, “Is it true there’s nothing left?”

  “Nothing that you want to see,” Father said. “You think it’s bad being on this river? Oh, boy, this is a vacation next to that war in the States.”

  Mr. Haddy said, “Was they a war up there?”

  “Horrendous,” Father said.

  “You’re trying to frighten us,” Mother said. “Stop talking this way, Allie. It’s cruel. You don’t know what’s happened in the States.”

  “I know what I’ve seen. I know about the armies, the soldiers—all the burning and killing.” He was beating his broom in the river. “They knew where I was.”

  Mother held the twins in her arms. They sat under the tent Father had made from his shirt. Mother said, “He’s joking, girls. Don’t pay any attention.”

  “Some joke,” Father said.

  He looked at me and winked.

  “But we’re safe now. This boat, this river—you think it’s precarious, but I tell you, we’re looking good. We’re alive. That’s more than I can say for some people.”

  It was now June. A year before, we had left Hatfield. Two nights ago, we had seen Jeronimo destroyed. In Father’s mind, the United States had been wiped out in just the same way as Jeronimo—fire had done it, and all that was left was smoke and a storm of yellow poison. That was what he said.

  “They were after me. It was a narrow escape.”

  I wanted him to stop.

  I said, “This is a beautiful river.”

  “Now you’re talking, Charlie! Hear that, Mother? He says it’s a beautiful river. You bet your life it is.”

  He said no more about the war in America or the loss of Jeronimo, which were for him the same thing. He spoke calmly of how we could begin again. He said these close calls had sharpened his wits.

  This was the proof. We were in a fourteen-foot pipanto and moving swiftly toward the coast. It was no more than a flatboat, but we had shade and seats and a smudge pot. Father had converted it into something comfortable and fast. He talked wildly, but his talk was like creation, and on that downstream trip he never stopped. I had been worried. Yesterday he had cried, today he was yelling about his experience and the end of the world. He was very restless and hungry-seeming and now less predictable than ever. But there was no man on earth more ingenious.

  23

  JERRY ROCKED on the beam seat Father had made. He whispered, “Dad thinks he’s great,” and looked at me with a scolded scowl.

  Clover put her head down. “He is great.”

  “There are lots of inventors in the world. He’s not the only one.”

  “He’s not like the others,” I said.

  “Anyway, the world is destroyed,” April said. “Dad said so.”

  Jerry said, “How do you know he’s not like the others?”

  “He has different reasons,” I said.

  “Like what?”

  I glanced astern—Father’s widening eyes dared me to speak.

  In that pause, Jerry’s whisper was harsh. “You don’t know.”

  But I did. Father was ingenious because he needed comfort. He never admitted it, but I knew it from Jeronimo and from the spruced-up pipanto. He had not changed, he was still inventive, he still needed comfort—more than we did. He was dead set on improving things, but he was not like any other man. I could not tell Jerry while Father was listening. He invented for his own sake! He was an inventor because he hated hard beds and bad food and slow boats and flimsy huts and dirt. And waste—he complained about the cost of things, but it wasn’t the money. It was the fact that they got weak and broke after you bought them. He thought of himself first!

  It was why he had invented the hydraulic chair and foot massager in Hatfield. It explained his lack of interest in his industrial inventions—potboilers, he called them. And it also explained his mania for ice. It was the reason he wept when Jeronimo was destroyed. He didn’t want to live, as he said, like a monkey.

  His movements, his travel, were inventions, too. When it looked to him as though America was doomed, he invented a way out. Leaving the country on the banana boat was one of his most ingenious schemes. And Jeronimo had been full of examples of his ingenuity, gadgets he had devised to make life—his life—easier. These schemes and tactics were his answer to the imperfect world. But I sometimes pitied him. Discomfort and dissatisfaction made his brain spin.

  A moment ago, hearing Jerry’s whispers, Mother said, “He’s a perfectionist.”

  “Don’t be bitter,” Father said.

  Mother was looking at the jungle on the riverbank.

  “What a place for a perfectionist,” she said.

  Everyone thought of him as rough and ready. But I was not fooled. He was the opposite of a camper! He grew prize vegetables because he could not stand the taste of bananas and wabool. He hated sleeping
outdoors. “It’s lawless and unnatural to sleep on the bare ground.” He always spoke tenderly about his own bed. “Even animals make beds!” An everlasting supply of free ice was his reply to the tropics, a complicated system of pumps his reply to the dry season. He liked the odds stacked against him. He said it helped him think. But though he was ambitious for his own comfort, he had never tried to cash in on his inventions—only to live a life that others might want to copy. The royalties on his patents he regarded as “funny money.” “I may be selfish,” he said, “but I’m not greedy.”

  Selfishness had made him clever. He wanted things his way—his bed and his food and the world as well. His explanations of events were as ingenious as his inventions. Had there been a war in the United States? Were people after him, as he said? Was it a fact that he was being hunted because “they always kill the smart ones first”? We did not know. But if you believed any of this, you could be very happy here. You did not notice the heat or the insects or the darkness that buried you at night. Father’s talk took away your sense of smell. After hearing him speak about America, it comforted you to think that you were so far away on the Mosquito Coast. It comforted him!

  Here he was, shouting his plans at us and grinning at our bewilderment. It might be simple scheming, like improving the pipanto pole, or making a smudge pot out of a coconut husk, or describing the foolproof house he was going to make. Or it could be almost batty.

  “What a thoroughly rotten job God made of the world!”

  I had never heard a single person criticize God before. But Father talked about God the way he talked about jobbing plumbers and electricians. “The dead boy with the spinning top” was the way he described God. “And the top is almost out of steam. Feel it wobble?”