The Mosquito Coast

by Paul Theroux

  The Gowdy shivered.

  “What’s that?” Father said, and pointed.

  “Hice,” the Gowdy said.

  “Jesus Christ Almighty!” Father roared, and gave the Gowdy a shove, nearly knocking the old man over.

  But no sooner had he spoken than every one of the people, including the Gowdy, dropped to his knees. The sudden movement startled the birds. A great uprush of them, big and small, shook the branches overhead, and these birds alerted the roosting birds, which took off like turkeys from the treetops. The sick puppy yapped and stumbled as the people knelt low, pinching their throats and murmuring.

  “Ah Fadder wart neven hello bead name—”

  “Cut it out!” Father said. “Get up—off your knees!” He tried to drag them up, then he turned to Francis and screamed, “You traitor, you gave me a bum steer! Thanks a lot!”

  Mr. Haddy was laughing softly, relieved that they were Christians. And maybe he was secretly glad that Father, who seldom made mistakes, had blundered by taking ice here, when Mr. Haddy himself could more easily have shipped it to the coast and made a greater impression. He went forward to calm the confused people, who were still gasping and praying, and said, “You is good folks, but this is bush for true.”

  Father was so angry he vanished in the way the people in Seville had near the duckboards. He went up in a puff of smoke, leaving only his angry smell behind. We removed the rest of the parcels from the boat and talked to the villagers. They said that they had seen ice four or five times. They said it was wonderful stuff and they described it as cold stones that turned into water. Missionaries had brought it to them, and they believed that we were missionaries, too, and Father was our preacher. They wanted to know where we lived and if we had any food or salt to give them. The Gowdy boasted that everyone in the village was baptized.

  He said they were waiting—waiting to go to Heaven and see the Lord Jesus. Mr. Haddy said it was a pretty rotten place to wait, full of monkey-shoo, but he could understand why they wanted to leave as soon as possible, for Heaven or anywhere else. Father returned—too late to hear any of this, which was just as well.

  “I walked around the block,” he said.

  He would not speak to anyone in Seville. He said only that Francis had betrayed him. When the Gowdy tried to get the people started on a hymn, Father yelled as if he had hit his thumb with a hammer, and then said he would wait for us on the boat.

  We left Seville. The people had begun to quarrel over the ice.

  Father’s moodiness made the trip back to Jeronimo mostly silent. But it was a faster trip. The contours of the river were not strange to us anymore, and the current was with us. Father made improvements on his map and we did not take any wrong turns. I worked the pedals. Father sat in the bow with Clover on his lap, sulking over his map, because the Seville people had seen ice before and because they prayed. “They might as well be in Hatfield, cutting asparagus,” was all he said. He hugged Clover, like a big boy with a teddy bear. Francis and Mr. Haddy knew they were being ignored. They crouched amidships in the ice-storage vault with nothing to do.

  After a while, Francis said he saw pipantos. Someone was following us, he said. Father did not reply or turn his head.

  “Little one,” Mr. Haddy said, looking past me. “Pipanto.”

  I glanced around but did not see anything. I had the steering to attend to.

  “Me yerry,” Francis whispered. He began muttering like a bush Zambu. He said he heard six paddlers—three pipantos.

  “Never see no lanch like this,” Mr. Haddy said.

  Darkness came. It seemed to grow out of the riverside. The trees swelled, fattened by the blackness. The high curve went out of the sky. Pinheads of stars appeared and brightened into blobs.

  “They still back of us in the rock-stone.”

  And night was around us. The water still held a slippery glimmer ahead, and behind us was the paddle wheel’s loose froth, spreading in the current.

  Soon we saw the lanterns of Jeronimo and the sparks from Fat Boy’s chimney stack. The lights were small and very still on shore, but they poured from the bank and leaked yellow pools into the river. I heard someone say, “Here they come.”

  In the bedroom that night, Jerry said, “I could have gone with Dad. But I didn’t want to. We were at the Acre all day. Ma let us.”

  “I saw two snakes,” I said. “One almost bit me.”

  “We built another man trap. You don’t know where it is. You’ll fall in and kill yourself, Charlie.”

  “Go to sleep, crappo.”

  Later, through the bamboo wall, I heard Mother consoling Father. At first I thought she was speaking to April or Clover, her voice was so soft. But she was talking about the ice, and the boat, and his hard work. It was all brilliant, she said. She was proud of him, and nothing else mattered.

  Father did not object. He said, “It wasn’t what I expected. I didn’t want that. They prayed at me, Mother.”

  “I’d like to go upstream sometime,” Mother said.

  “We’ll go. It’s not what you think. You won’t like it. It’s bad, but in the most boring way. Oh, I suppose they’re all right—they’ll be able to use the ice for something. But what can you do with people who’ve already been corrupted? It makes me mad.”

  ***

  It was two weeks before we went back to Seville, and in those two weeks we kids spent more time at the Acre, in our little camp by the pool. It pleased me to think that our camp was sturdier than anything in Seville. We wove hammocks out of green vines. We ate wild onions. The hammocks gave us rashes, the onions gave us cramps. A water dog crept out of the pool one day and we chased it into a trap and beat it to death with sticks. Then we cut it into pieces and dried the meat strips on a tripod, Zambu-style. But the next day the meat strips were gone. Peewee said a monster had come and eaten them, but I guessed it was an animal, because the tripod was not high enough.

  We collected berries. Some were to eat, and others kept mosquitoes away if you rubbed them on your skin and let the juice dry. Alice Maywit showed us a cluster of purple ones and said, “These is poison.”

  Clover said, “I don’t believe you. You’re afraid of everything. I bet they’re blackberries or something.”

  “Want to eat one, girl?” Drainy said. He showed her his wire-bending teeth.

  Clover looked as though she was willing to try, just to show off and prove she was right, but I punched her hard and told her to stay away from them.

  “No hitting!” she said. “That’s the rule—Dad said so!”

  “This isn’t Jeronimo,” I said. “This is our Acre and we have our own rules.”

  That was the pleasure of the Acre—that we could do whatever we wanted. We had money, school, and religion here, and traps and poison. No inventions or machines. We had secrets—why, we even knew the Maywits’ real name. We could pretend we were schoolchildren, or we could live like Zambus. That day was a good example. Drainy suggested that we take off all our clothes, and he pulled down his own shorts to show he was serious. Then Peewee did the same, and so did Clover and the others. Alice yanked her dress over her head and dropped her bloomers, and I stepped out of my shorts. The eight of us stood there giggling and stark naked, but I was so ashamed I jumped into the pool and pretended I wanted to swim, while the others compared bodies and danced around.

  Alice was standing at the lip of the pool.

  “Ever see a carkle?”

  She knelt with her knees apart and pinched the black wrinkles in her fingers, and for a moment I thought I was going to drown.

  “What’s that?” She closed her thighs and listened.

  I heard nothing but the usual noises. Alice said she heard horseflies. She saw one coming toward her and she looked steadily at it and got very worried. She said it meant there were strangers about.

  We quickly put on our clothes and left the camp by the river path. Minutes later, we saw canoes. They were Indians, Alice said. She had known that from the horse
fly. The canoes were old and waterlogged dugouts, and the paddlers looked like the Seville people, their thin arms sticking out of rags, and broken straws in their bushy hair.

  “They’re trying to spy on us,” Jerry said.

  But they could not see us watching them. We had outsmarted them, and we laughed softly—even April, who was usually afraid—seeing them struggling upstream in their old canoes.

  “They’re coming from Jeronimo,” Clover said.

  “Good thing they ain’t see us naked!” Drainy said.

  “They’ll never find our camp,” I said. “No one will find the Acre.”

  I was glad that we had this safe place in the jungle. And now, because I had seen Seville, I knew that ours was a well-ordered camp—better than the villages made by real jungle people.

  We mentioned the canoes in Jeronimo. No one had seen them. Father said, “Maybe Munchies! Maybe Duppies!” and tried to frighten the Maywits.

  On the morning Father said we were going back to Seville, Mr. Peaselee, who was doing fireman duty, let Fat Boy’s fire go out. The ice melted. Father said, “We might have to cancel the trip. Everyone to the Gallery!” He gave a lecture about responsibility and good habits, and did we think Fat Boy could live without care and attention? Fat Boy was kind because we were careful, but if we were careless he would turn dangerous. If we neglected to do our duty, he would split open and take his revenge by killing us all. Father said, “He’s full of poison!”

  After Fat Boy was stoked and new ice was made and packed, I heard Father say, “You can’t take your eyes off these people for a minute.”

  Mother said, “That’s just what Polski used to say.”

  “Don’t compare me to that turkey.”

  “You’re getting shrill, Allie.”

  “Poison,” Father said. “Hydrogen and enriched ammonia—thirty cubic feet of each one. You’d be shrill too, if you knew the danger.”

  “I’ll get the food,” Mother said, and walked away.

  Father saw me listening. “I’m the only one around here carrying the ball. Why is that, Charlie? You tell me.”

  I thought, He really does sound like Polski.

  We left for Seville—the Fox family, no one else. Father pedaled and talked the whole time.

  “Don’t think I’m enjoying this,” he said. “The last thing I want to do is go back to Seville. I’d just as soon go back to Hatfield. But we’re obliged. We can’t drop them after one shipment. I thought we might inspire them, help them out, cool their fish and give them time for farming—do all the things that ice lets you do. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? Give them the benefit of our experience? But I know what they’ll do with the ice—they’ll cube it and dump it into their glasses of Coke and just go haywire like everyone else.”

  “You didn’t say anything about Coca-Cola,” Mother said.

  “Give them time.”

  We made Seville in under three hours, Father pedaling furiously and shouting about how he was going to dynamite a canal through the jungle and dredge the hyacinths out of the river. In his angry mood he imagined the grandest schemes. At the mahoganies we were met by five Seville people—they popped out of the spinach and the grass and startled us. They had seen us on the river, they said. But we had not seen them. They danced around Mother, telling her to be careful.

  “We didn’t get a reception like this the last time,” Father said.

  “I think they want us to follow them,” Mother said.

  As before, I ran ahead, stamping on the duckboards to frighten away the snakes. Jerry was behind me, looking worriedly from side to side.

  He said, “What’s that thing?”

  “It wasn’t here before.” Clover said.

  It was a wooden box in the clearing of Seville, as tall as me, and from a distance it looked like Fat Boy. It was smaller, somewhat resembling the original Worm Tub. It had a chimney stack and a firebox. Several women squatted near it. stoking its fire.

  This pleased Father. “Maybe we inspired them after all,” he said. He called out to the Gowdy. who was waiting to greet us. “What have you got there?” Father said. “That looks kind of familiar.”

  He walked straight up to it while the Seville people gathered around.

  The Gowdy said, “Hice!”

  Father opened the door, but the hinges of tattered vine were so flimsy the door fell off and the corner of it caught fire when it banged the firebox. Father kicked the fire out. We looked inside. It was empty.

  “What the hell is this all about?” Father said.

  They had made a copy of Fat Boy. But, Father said, what good was it? Of course it didn’t work. It was only good for boiling eggs or setting yourself on fire. “Who gave you this harebrained idea?”

  They smiled. They treated this box with a kind of reverence and asked Father to lead them in hymns in front of it. This enraged Father. He began to smell of his anger. The Gowdy tried to present Father with the lame puppy, but Father said he had enough sick animals of his own, and sick people too. So we unloaded the ice, and without even unwrapping it we went back to the Icicle. He said to Mother, “I hope you’re satisfied.” He also said he would never again go to Seville.

  “I didn’t come here to give people false idols to worship,” he said. But the idol was there for all to see, made of warped planks and fastened by lianas.

  “That’s the trouble, really,” Father said. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

  16

  “WHAT’S ice good for?” little Leon Maywit had asked. But Father did not mind silly questions from small children. He went on, “Mainly it’s a preservative—it keeps food fresh, so it keeps you from starvation and disease. It kills germs, it suppresses pain, and it brings down swellings. It makes everything it touches taste better without altering it chemically. Makes vegetables crisp and meat last forever. Listen, it’s an anesthetic. I could remove your appendix with a jackknife if I had a block of ice to cool your nerves and take your mind off the butchery. It doesn’t occur naturally on the Mosquito Coast, so it’s the beginning of perfection in an imperfect world. It makes sense of work. It’s free. It’s even pretty. It’s civilization. It used to be carried from northern latitudes on ships in just the same way they carried gold and spices—”

  We were on the Gallery, all of us, Foxes, Maywits, Zambus, Mrs. Flora Kennywick, and the others—one of Father’s dinner gatherings. Father pointed his finger stump at the mountains rising behind Fat Boy.

  He said, “And that’s next. Injun country. We’ll take them a ton.”

  The newer people looked at his finger, not the mountains, and just as he said “ton,” there was an earth tremor and their eyes popped.

  It was a noiseless wobble, a slow half-roll that made the Gallery quiver. It was twenty seconds of rotation, like the drop of a boat deck. Nothing fell down, though there was a human yell in the forest and a breathless bark of worry from the river. I had the feeling that everything had moved but us. The world’s peel had wrinkled and made a little skid. That was the first shuddering stall, but its various shakes and smoothings lasted a full minute.

  Father made a flutterblast with his lips and said, “Gaw!”

  Mrs. Maywit said, “Oh, God. Roper, what we do?” and she and Mrs. Kennywick began praying.

  When I heard “Roper,” I looked at Mr. Maywit. He covered his face and sobbed, “Never mind!” The moment passed. I think I was the only one who heard.

  “Pray if you must,” Father said, “but I’d rather you listened to me.”

  Everyone except us looked worried, as if he might point again at the mountains and cause another earthquake.

  “I’m just thinking out loud,” Father said, “but if I had the hardware, know what I’d do?”

  At this, Mother smiled. I guessed what she was thinking—why do anything?

  It was plain from where we sat that Jeronimo was a success. We had defeated the mosquitoes, tamed the river, drained the swamp, and irr
igated the gardens. We had seen the worst of Honduras weather—the June floods, the September heat—and we had overcome both. We had just this moment withstood an earth tremor: nothing had shaken loose! We were organized, Father said. Our drinking water was purified in a distiller that ran from Fat Boy’s firebox. We had the only ice-making plant in Mosquitia, the only one of its kind in the world, and the capability, Father said, of making an iceberg.

  Down there were cornstalks, eight-and-a-half feet high, with cobs a foot long—“So big, it only takes eleven of them to make a dozen.” We had fresh fruit and vegetables and an incubator (Fat Boy’s spare heat) for hatching eggs. “Control—that’s the proof of civilization. Anyone can do something once, but repeating it and maintaining it—that’s the true test.” We grew rice, the most difficult of crops. We had a superior sewage system and shower apparatus. “We’re clean!” An efficient windmill pump overrode the water wheel on the ice-making days. Most of the inventions had been made from local materials, and three new buildings were faced with Father’s bamboo tiles. We had a chicken run and two boats at the landing and the best flush toilets in Honduras. Jeronimo was a masterpiece of order—“appropriate technology,” Father called it.

  We produced more than we needed. The extra fish we caught swam in a tank Father named “the Fish Farm”—his names were always a little grander than the things themselves. We harvested more than we could eat, but the excess was not sold. Some of it he gave to people in return for work, though he never handed out any food to beggars. What he preferred to do was cut the produce open—watermelons, say, or cucumbers or corn—and empty out the seeds and dry them. He would give these to anyone who helped him. There was always work to do—he was determined to straighten the river and clear it of hyacinths, for instance. “It could take a lifetime,” he said. “But I’ve got a lifetime! I’m not going anywhere!” River workers were rewarded with blocks of ice and bags of seeds. “Hybrids! Burpees! Wonder corn! Miracle beans! Sixty-day tomatoes!”

  We were happy and hidden. All you could see of Jeronimo from the river was Fat Boy’s square head and tin hat and the smoking chimney stack. “Low visibility,” Father said. “I don’t want to be pestered by goofball missionaries in motorboats who want to come up here and ooze Scripture all over us.”