The Lower River

  “They’re all dying to leave.” He shrugged. “Because it’s a failed state. Whose fault is that?”

  Afterward, Hock saw clearly what he had missed at lunch—that Gilroy, like the embassy people he’d known long ago, was downbeat about the country and didn’t know it well; that he felt he’d been posted to a hopeless place and had to make the best of it; that he would be gone in a year or so and in a new country. Gilroy was fragmentary in the way of lawyers and bureaucrats, and because of that he was impossible to pin down, evasive, a man of no fixed beliefs.

  Hock felt nothing but gratitude for being in Malawi, thankful that the country still existed, was still sleepy and friendly and ramshackle, that it had welcomed him. That day, walking along the street, strangers meeting his gaze smiled and said hello, and when he spoke to them in their own language they shrieked with pleasure.

  The air was dense and hot, woven of many odors, and just a whiff brought it all back. He was walking down Hanover to Henderson, to the corner of Laws, to the bookshop, where he’d caught a glimpse of the sign Office Supplies. The countryside, so close, penetrated the town. You could not see the bush from the main street, but you could smell it: the wood smoke floated past the shops and seeped into the brick and stucco, the peculiar hum of scorched eucalyptus, the dustiness of dead leaves, the fields chopped apart by rusty mattocks to release the sharpness of bruised roots and red earth, all of it stinking with ripeness and decay; and on every sidewalk the sweetish feety smell of the people, the sourness of their rags. He closed his eyes and inhaled and smiled and thought, I could not be anywhere else but here.

  In the bookshop, Blantyre Printery and Office Supplies, he found a young clerk and asked for the manager.

  “I am the manager”—a young man in a blue shirt, red necktie, a pencil tucked into the thickness of his bushy hair.

  “I want to buy a couple of these cartons and fill them with school materials. Books and things.”

  “This tub?”

  It was a plastic container for storing files, with handles and a clip-on lid that would keep the dust out.

  “This, yes, this tub,” Hock said.

  He selected readers, forty of them, and forty copybooks, some dictionaries, some picture books, an assortment of pens and colored pencils and rulers, a large-format atlas of Africa, another of the world. He chose hurriedly, pointing to shelves, thinking that anything he bought would be welcome.

  “How much?” he asked when the two containers were filled.

  “I will tally up the docket,” the young man said, eyeing Hock sideways, and he made out the invoice. Though this was a lengthy process, involving several pads and the shuffling and interleaving of blue carbon paper, Hock sat and watched with contentment, liking the meticulous listing of each item, the digging of the ballpoint into the softness of the pad in triplicate, the exercise of an old skill.

  After he paid, Hock wrote an address on a piece of paper, saying, “Here is where I want you to deliver this. The U.S. consulate, Mr. Gilroy.” And he scribbled a note to go with it, saying that he would be in touch on his return from Malabo.

  The coffee shop that Gilroy had indicated, where Norman Fogwill might be, was closed when Hock passed by in the late afternoon. He drank a beer in the garden of the hotel, and as darkness fell he heard music from the nightclub adjacent to the hotel, its name picked out in lights, the Starlight.

  Telling himself that he was merely taking a walk, he wandered over to the club and was at once greeted by taxi drivers, by touts, by shyly beckoning girls at the doorway. He went nearer to the entrance and looked inside—a crowd, a band, shadows, a few lights piercing webs of smoke—and a man in sunglasses said, “You’re welcome. Don’t be a stranger. Come inside, boss.”

  Hock eased himself past the loitering men and boys, and once inside the dimly lit club, he made his way to an empty table by the wall. Colored lights flickered on the gleaming dance floor. The music was so loud he could scarcely hear the waitress ask what he wanted. He ordered a beer. Before it was brought, a girl asked with finger gestures if she could join him. Hock patted the chair seat next to him.

  She was small, with a mass of tight shiny curls, a pretty, somewhat impish face, and wore a dark jacket over a white blouse. Her knees bumped his as she sat, squirming, smiling, being a coquette. When his bottle of beer arrived, Hock signaled—gestures again, the music was deafening—for the waitress to bring her a drink.

  The girl leaned closer and shouted into his ear, “What country?”

  “United States.”

  “Big country,” she said, still shouting.

  “Dzina lanu ndani?” Hock asked.

  “Merry,” she said—at least that was how it sounded. Then, “You are knowing my language.”

  “Kwambiri!”

  She touched his leg. She leaned again, her mouth against his ear. “You want jig-jig?”

  Hock was startled. The girl saw his reaction and looked gratified, even strengthened, taking her drink from the waitress’s tray and twirling her tongue on the straw. Hock took a breath and inclined his body toward hers and found himself shouting, “Not now!”

  “Why not? We get taxi. My home is just near.”

  Hock said, “I’m worried about kudwala.”

  “I not sick.” She looked indignant, sitting back and staring at him with widened eyes.

  “But maybe I’m sick,” Hock said.

  “Okay.” That seemed to pacify her. “I give you—what? Massage, what you want.” And when Hock frowned she said, “Let we go.”

  The music was so loud, Hock wondered whether he was hearing correctly. Was she really saying these things with such composure? At that moment, dizzy from the music and the cigarette smoke, Hock became aware of another girl pressing toward him from his other side.

  The first girl, Merry, spoke harshly, and the girls quarreled for a moment, screeching at each other, until Hock, to quiet them, gestured to the waitress to serve the second one a beer.

  “What country?” the new girl asked.

  She was big, in a tight-fitting dress, with a fat face and spiky hair, and when she smiled, which she was doing now, she showed a gap in her front teeth that was as wide as a keyhole.

  “Alessi,” she said, extending her hand.

  Merry leaned toward Hock and said, “Let we go. Please. I need money. I got a little kid.”

  “I have to make a phone call,” Hock said. “Here, take this, for the beer.” He gave each girl some money. “I’ll be right back.” They squawked as he left, and he realized that all he had given them was the Malawi equivalent of a dollar apiece.

  He fled, feeling hot and desperate, hurrying to the safety of his hotel, where he locked himself in his room, sitting in the dark, breathing hard, hearing the music pulsing at the window, fearful of going out and perhaps meeting the girls.

  6

  HE WAS REMINDED on his third day of how time passed in Africa with no event to mark its passing—a meaningless slipping away of days. Once again, he woke in harsh early-morning light, thinking, I must leave. But he wondered at the urgency. After breakfast, he introduced himself to the clerk at the travel desk in the lobby and asked about a car and driver.

  “You want to book now, Mr. Ellis?” the clerk asked.

  “I want to know how much notice you need.”

  “We have cars. We have drivers. We are ready to serve you, sir.”

  “Good. I just have to run an errand first.”

  “I will be waiting you just here, Mr. Ellis.”

  Hock walked quickly down the hill toward Kandodo Supermarket, and approaching it he saw that the small coffee shop was open, a propped-up sign on the sidewalk lettered Coffee Cakes Sweets.

  Inside, two old men faced each other across a chessboard. One was heavyset, with thick eyebrows, wide shoulders, his elbows on the table, hovering over the board, perhaps contemplating a move. The other man was thin, white-haired, with sunken cheeks, sitting sideways, his legs crossed, his hands in his lap. When the th
in man smiled at the consternation of his opponent, Hock saw that he had one front tooth. This had to be Norman Fogwill. His narrow trousers emphasized his thin legs.

  Hock entered the coffee shop. The man he took to be Norman Fogwill said to his chess opponent, “You got a customer, mate,” and to Hock, “He’s stumped. He has nowhere to go.”

  “I have an answer,” the heavy man said, his accent like a morsel of unchewed food in his mouth. But he didn’t move a chess piece. “You want coffee?”

  “Take your time,” Hock said.

  The man roared and stood up, kicking his chair back, and stamped his feet.

  “See?” Fogwill said, and laughed, showing his single tooth. He worked his tongue around the tooth, then coughed, shaking a cigarette out of a pack and lighting it.

  “I used to smoke those,” Hock said. “Springboks. I’m sure you don’t remember me, but I was here in the sixties. Are you Norman Fogwill?”

  “What’s left of him,” Fogwill said. “Have a seat. Make that two coffees, Mario.”

  The other man was now behind the counter, locking a chrome handle into the underside of an espresso machine.

  “I’m Ellis Hock. I was in the Lower River.”

  “I know who you are,” Fogwill said in an awakening tone. He looked pleased, but his tight smile only made his face more skeletal. “You had snakes. Big ones in baskets. I used to hump copybooks and biros down from the office. And ink for your Gestetner. Lord, there’s a relic. A duplicator!”

  “You remember?”

  “How could I forget? It took me two days to get there in that motor, the Willys Jeep on that bloody awful road. Shaketty-boom, shaketty-shaketty boom.” He sucked at the cigarette and made his mouth square and shushed out blue smoke. “I had to stay overnight and leave the next day. One night was enough for me! How did you stand it for two years?”

  “Almost four years,” Hock said.

  “Good God. What was the name of that benighted village?”

  “Malabo.”

  “Right. Smack in the bush. They had teachers and health workers in Nsanje, but no one replaced you in Malabo. That’s a fact.”

  “Because I phased myself out. I taught them how to run the show.”

  “And a dog’s breakfast they made of it, I reckon.”

  Hock said, “It was the best school in the district.”

  “Oh, right, sorry. A proper little Eton College you had down there,” Fogwill said, still mocking and not seeming to notice Hock’s indignation.

  Hock said, “So what have you been doing for the past forty years?”

  “This,” he said, sitting upright, and he pulled a face, as though he’d just performed a successful trick. He called out to the man at the espresso machine. “Have I not, Mario?” But he become serious and said, “Remember my last duchess? That village beauty from Fort Johnson, Yao by tribe. We had three kids. She got fed up with the politics and swanned off to the UK. She’s still there, in a nice council flat in Bristol. My kids are married. I’m a grandfather, can you believe it?” He looked teasingly at Hock and said, “You never came to town. We had to hump all your katundu to you in the bush.”

  Hock said, “I took the train up to see Haile Selassie. Ten hours in third class.”

  Fogwill said, “The train’s not running anymore.”

  “I was happy in the Lower River.”

  Fogwill said, “Things are different now.”

  “In what way?”

  “I used to leave my house unlocked back then.”

  “So you lock it now?”

  “Not that it does a whit of good. I’ve been broken into so many times there’s nothing left to steal.”

  “That’s life in the big city.”

  “I live in the bundu,” Fogwill said. “Unlike our friend here.”

  The man Mario had served the cups of coffee and was sitting, listening to Fogwill. Now Mario said, “Me, I’m no like the bush.”

  “It’s a thirty-minute drive,” Fogwill said. “It suits me. Besides, I can’t afford anything else. The land belonged to my wife’s brother. He died of HIV. I’m educating his youngest son.” And as if seeing Hock for the first time, he smiled and said, “So, what brings you here?”

  “Going to the Lower River.”

  “No one goes there now. I haven’t been down there for yonks.” He sipped his cup of coffee, holding it daintily with tremulous fingers. He said, “Not much has changed here. Except we don’t have the old man anymore, and they kill albinos and make them into medicine, and they look for virgins to deflower—cures AIDS and the pox and heaven knows what, the dreaded lurgy, I fancy, though you’d be jolly lucky to find a virgin between here and Karonga.”

  “I’m going south,” Hock said. The only way he had ever been able to deal with the teasing ironies of English people like Fogwill was to conceal himself in his stereotype and be as literal-minded as they believed Americans to be.

  “Are you in possession of trade goods and shiny beads? Never mind, all they want is money. Or a mobile phone.”

  “No cell phone,” Hock said.

  “Astonishing.” Fogwill finished his coffee and smacked his lips and signaled for another. “You look smart. I once had a safari suit like that. Stout shoes. Bush hat. You look the part.”

  “It’s just a short vacation.”

  “I came for a short vacation forty years ago and I’m still here.” He looked through the café window into the street. “Buggered if I know why.”

  He had the gargoyle features of a castaway, and the clothes too, his shirt faded and patched, his shoes torn and repaired with wide stitches on one toe, sutures of waxed twine in the leather, a specialty of the market cobbler.

  As though to distract attention from his appearance, Fogwill began to tell a story about a recent night when he’d driven home drunk and fallen asleep in his car in the driveway of his house.

  “The entire inside of the car was thick with masses of green beer bottles, curiously empty, and for my sins I had a whacking great bruise on my bonce. I woke to an impertinent whickering—my servant, cheeky bugger, wailing ‘Bwana! Bwana! Time for your tea!’ I was of course deliciously foxed . . .”

  His houseboy, seeing him asleep in his car, pulled him out and dragged him to his bedroom, stripped off his clothes, and put him to bed.

  That was the story in a sentence. But Norman told it as a lengthy, lisping farce, with digressions and humorous self-mockery. It was a good story, and in the time it took him to tell it, Mario served him his second cup of coffee and made his much-pondered chess move.

  And Ellis thought: A story is a way of making life bearable. It was in general the English way, as he had experienced it among the expatriates. They would take a small disgraceful incident, remove the context, which was the great green frame of Africa, and make it a tale, choosing a few elements and adding droll phrases such as “curiously” and “for my sins” until it became a substitute for a stretch of monotony, or in Norman’s case, forty years of futility, living in a hut, abandoned by his African wife and children. He wanted to prove that he was not humiliated, not ignored, not counterfeit, not embittered, just killing time in this seedy town of ambiguous smells. He was a character in his own comedy. If you didn’t have a story, you hadn’t lived. The raggedness didn’t matter. What mattered was that Norman rescued a shred of dignity by relating the tale, depicting himself as a silly, forgivable drunk, tended to by a jungle Jeeves.

  The manner of his telling it mattered too, in his plummy accent, made plummier by his living in the African bush. But Hock knew what those stories were worth. He could even translate them. “House” did not mean house; it meant a leaky hut. “Car” meant jalopy, “servant” meant skinny boy, and “tea” did not mean a meal but rather a crust of bread or a stale Kandodo cookie.

  Hock was reminded why he had gone happily to the Lower River, why he had stayed there, why he was returning there now.

  Fogwill said, “Know what you should do? Head up to the lake. A coup
le of nice hotels have opened up there—not the backpacker ones, but tourist lodges. You can swim, you can hire a fishing guide, you can just lie in a hammock all day and stay squiffy. You’ve got the money for it.”

  Hock said, “But I’m going to the Lower River.”

  “Then abandon all hope.” Fogwill smiled again, and gestured, as if to say, “What are we going to do with this bloke!” But his one tooth and his sunken cheeks and frailty only made him seem pathetic.

  “Or you could sample the delights of Blantyre.”

  “I did that last night. What’s it called—the Starlight?”

  “Also the Izo Izo in Mbayani,” Mario said.

  “Oh, come on, you’re past it, same as me,” Fogwill said, his eyes flashing in anger.

  “What interested me,” Hock said, because he was embarrassed by Fogwill’s saying that, “what I couldn’t help noticing, was that the girls were so well dressed. And they were wearing shoes.”

  “First time I ever went to the Flamingo—remember that bar, on the Chileka Road? I was courting my wife. Manager says, ‘Can’t bring her in here. No shoes.’ I gave him a right bollocking, but he wouldn’t budge. No one had shoes!”

  “Was like that in Eritrea,” Mario said. “Assolutely.”

  “He’s another refugee, by way of Nairobi,” Fogwill said.

  Hock said, “What’s the road like to the Lower River?”

  “Tarmac as far as Chikwawa and then you’re on your own. Shaketty-shaketty-boom. You should go up to the lake. Have a holiday.”

  “I didn’t come here for a holiday,” Hock said.

  This sharpness seemed to awaken something in Fogwill’s memory, because he smiled again and shifted in his chair and said, “Independence—it was the biggest day this country has ever seen. We had the mother and father of a party at the consul’s house and all you teachers were invited. The place was packed. Huge celebration. I says to one of your blokes, ‘Well, this is one way of getting you buggers out of the bush.’ He says to me—I’ll never forget this—‘There’s someone missing.’

  “‘Probably living it up somewhere else,’ I says.